I just read a blog post written by a young mama — a thirty something year old mama. She wrote about the stage of life that’s hard. The repetitive dailies that are particular to young motherhood. She’s a great writer, part of a group of mamas who have a website to which they contribute entries. It’s for encouragement and help for other young moms — I suspect they are helped more themselves by offering the same to others. I’m so glad I read it (and I hope lots of other young mamas read it, too). It’s a hard stage of life. What great encouragement they are to one another and to all the readers of their blog. God bless them.
I’ve had women ask me countless times through the years if it gets easier. I try to encourage them that they’re doing a great job. And, to answer their question, I tell them, no. No, it doesn’t get easier. It gets different, but it doesn’t get easier — bcz other new hard things come along. There are many things that improve — but I don’t think they improve because the children get older so much as the mama gets wiser. While the children are being trained and are more helpful, there are other difficulties added to the mix. Mama starts improving her serve, as it were. She learns how to do things more efficiently and forces herself to do them that way until they’re habit — second nature. Efficiency fosters confidence and enables her to accomplish more in less time. All this enables her to be more attentive to her husband and to better care for her children. I tell young mamas they’ll cry for these days. They look at me like I’m nuts. And I understand.
I tell them they’ll long for these sunny days they think will never end. I tell them they’ll wish for one more pregnancy, one more nursing, one more diaper to change, one more story, one more potty training success day, one more jelly faced kiss, one more push on the swing, one more second of being clung to like glue, one more moment of being the only one to console a crying baby, a fearful toddler, a disappointed gradeschooler, a nervous teenager. They’re sure they will not. Ever. And I understand.
We all need every hard day of motherhood. The longer I’m a mother, the more sure I am of this truth. I cry for those early days… those early days when it was just us. Just us two. Just us three. Just us five. Just us seven. Just us nine… and so on. Everything was new. Everything was amazing. Days when it was just us reading bedtime Bible stories and praying beside beds, just us piling into the car, gathered around the table, sitting in the row at church, going on a trip, pushing a cart full of groceries, pulling a cart full of kids. Hard days. Days when lots didn’t get done. Days when so much growing was going on. Just us.
We all needed those hard days — those hard days brought us to these hard days. Those hard days brought us through all the hard days in between those early hard days and these hard days. I’m mindful of this as I look ahead to closing chapters of life—I want to remember I need these days and all I’m learning of the Lord and His ways through the years. I know I will need what He’s shown me and look forward to what He’ll teach me in the days ahead.
Though I know it doesn’t necessarily get easier, I do know He is faithful and that allows me to look forward to the different days ahead.
Every day in the news: a new outrage and the unintended consequence, hypocrisy. Outrage (and hypocrisy) on both sides for or against the cause du jour. Facebook memes, articles, quotes — all over, we’re seeing the proliferation of outrage over the so-called discrimination against behaviour and gender identity. For all these, Christians are viewed as hatemongers, intolerant, religious bigots. All of these events are instructive, we need to be careful we’re not hypocritical in what we say and do.
We’ve got to face this: Porn is an insidious, destructive, pernicious lie. No one benefits from porn. No one. People may think they’re benefiting as they temporarily have sensual and emotional gratification, or relief from stress or loss. Magazines and movies gave way to desktop and then laptop computers and now cellphones for everyone! Instant porn in a pocket. Porn in pockets everywhere. People may think the activity is harmless, private, inconsequential. They may think they’re actually doing their spouse a favour by not *actually* being seduced by real women. But that’s just one of the insidious lies; those are real women — women who’ve little more worth in that context than rubbish and men who use them advance and participate in this degradation of women and further perpetuate their soulless behaviour and destruction.
Porn destroys the purity and sanctity of life — of marriage — of intimacy. Secrecy and guilt change people and lead them to behave in ways they would never have thought they’d behave — to do things they could never imagined they’d do. No one sets out to be unfaithful, but that’s exactly what happens when a spouse is involved in porn–though they may feel no real harm’s been done. No longer is there sweet assurance of being wholly and singly devoted to the other (there’s the parenthetical online involvement that seems to not be actually, really in the home). No longer is appetite and desire a simple outpouring of the love relationship of a marriage. It’s been supplanted by new images, activities, fantasies.
For days my mind’s been flooded with grief and all sorts of other CSA emotions I’ve been trying to stifle. (I wrote this a week ago; gripped with the reality that sexualabuse steals and steels. Today I wondered if I wrote it as another of many, many entries I would write and never publish. But I’ll publish this today with the prayer that grown up little girls might be helped, encouraged and comforted — not alone, not wrecked, not forever bad or without hope.)
Do you ever feel like you’re just wasting time?
From me (and my family) to you, Happy Thanksgiving 2015