Hey Moms, Don't Be Weird

An ongoing conversation about Christian parenting and becoming soil

Over the last few years, I’ve received many requests from readers to write a book about parenting. My immediate response is shock and horror. “You’d better ask my kids what they think about that!” is my deflective response. The children know better than anyone that I’m not the expert. (Remember that time…?)A mother either has to be blinded by arrogance or ready to bathe in humiliation if she intends to write about parenting. I’m sure there’s nuance in the middle, but not much.

Our family is a work in progress in which every member participates in the joys and the trials, the wounding and the healing; yet for better or worse, parents have more influence. Should I write a book about what it means to have that authority? Maybe. Would it be a prescriptive how-to resource? No, that would be dishonest. Could it be part of the conversation we should continue to have on healing the family? Yes.

The Domestic Church (Ecclesia Domestica!) is a mystery just as the broader institution of the Church is a mystery, built upon the Spirit through the flesh and blood of deeply flawed people. The latter is built (humanly speaking) on the foundation of the former. Where the family is fractured, the Church is also.

I have often tripped over the reality of my own leadership…
“Dear God—since you are God—you knew how I would be. And if you really loved my children, then you wouldn’t have given them such an incompetent mother.”

God knew how I would be and He let me have these kids anyway. There I was at 21, entrusted with mothering a precious firstborn son. And here I am at 47, still feeling like an newbie and periodically shedding familiar tears of frustration.

“I am not enough for these beautiful people. WHY, Lord, have you done this?”

Somehow, within that mind-boggling choice of the Creator of the Universe, I must find peace.

There’s a short list of reasons that I get visibly angry with my kids. Fear is at the top. A close second is “My God, what have I done?” when I see that they’ve been excellent students of my own behaviors. It pierces. STOP. DOING. THAT. RIGHT. NOW. I don’t want to look at the fruits of my own vice. I don’t want to be the mom who breaks people; and yet I have indeed, at times, been a lousy mom.

As much as I love and lean on our beautiful Blessed Mother, I identify much more strongly with St. Peter, who, in spite of himself, was given authority over a precious fragile Church. Mary is a perfect model and sweet mother to me. Peter is a different sort of model of radical, zealous, messy, impetuous trust. The Chosen’s recent artistic depiction (Season 4) of the first “servant of the servants of God” deeply moved me and inspired me to seek a more surrendered motherhood.

Less of me but not without me. Because for some reason, God made me, loves me, knows me, and chooses me.

I once saw a shirt that said “Weird moms build character.” I laughed. No wonder my kids are all a bunch of characters! That chuckle turned into a sigh. Maybe too many people grow up having to endure weird moms, and maybe too few are raised by moms who are reliable, available, psychologically healthy, and tender. There’s a part of me that wants to be the eccentric mom who is notable and who makes her kids proud. Then I recall the typical 5-year old who really just wants a peanut butter sandwich and a place on mom’s lap. It’s only later in life that we are impacted by the public perception of our moms because it impacts our own ego... and theirs. It’s nice to be proud of our moms and their accomplishments, but even in adulthood, we really just want to be known and loved by them.

I want to be the mom who pours out in such a way that she disappears into the fabric of the lives of her children. Like the soil that isn’t the flower but mysteriously nourishes the flower and allows it to bloom. When that flower dies, it also become part of the soil that nourishes the next season’s blossoms.

It’s an imperfect analogy but it sticks with me. If I am washed away or consumed by weeds, I can’t really do my job. With others, for others, in the light of the One who made us substantially part of Himself and the world. Perhaps the most effective parents are the ones who are at peace knowing that they will be completely forgotten within two generations, that a loving home forms the soil of generations, and that eternity is worth the work it takes to heal.

The internet is filled with memes about narcissistic mother, because clinical NPD is traumatic for the victims. The trouble of course is that everyone knows an offender but no one admits to being one. There is also the unfortunate truth that we don’t have to be diagnosable to be prone to toxic selfish jerkery. As I’ve recently written, if you take bad parenting and slap religious piety on it, you still have bad parenting. The only difference is that you're perhaps more likely to have children with a hardened antipathy towards you, the faith you preach, and the trauma of fractured attachment.

As much as we prefer to point to the dysfunction of our parents or previous generations, we should be rooting it out in our selves and prioritizing change. By the grace of God, and attentiveness to his design for the mind, body, and soul, it is possible. Pray, forgive, repent, heal, change, wash, rinse, repeat.

Trying to mother well with a broken mind and heart is a lot like trying to run a race with a broken leg. We can give it everything we’ve got but there are going to be problems. The burdens of unhealed generations may have been placed upon us in our formative years, perhaps teaching us in practice the wrong things about the most important things. Once we understand where love has been fractured, we are better able to love those entrusted to our care.

I don’t want to be a mom so broken that I leave a wake of devastation in my own maternal path. Where are the places that I have been that woman? And how can I restore what has been broken? Depending on the circumstance, the only control I may have may be on my knees in prayer and the hard work of the beautiful tedium of a vocation to love.

“Believing in her child’s basic goodness is only possible if the mother believes in her own goodness.”

If I ever do write a book about parenting, it can’t be prescriptive because, outside of the Gospel, I don’t have answers. So perhaps the heart is here:

Parenting is hard, not only because everyone involved struggles with sin and vice, but also because we are malformed, propagandized, and confused by familial and societal culture by degree. In other words, we don’t know what we don’t know… until we have the opportunity to be broken open, guts spilled all over the floor, and pieced back together in right order by the the truth of the Divine Physician, better formation, grace, and the school of experience.

I desire to be fully liberated to love well and I want my children to be the same. The older I get in motherhood, the more willing I am to self examine without getting caught in the trap of despair and self-loathing. I want to be free. I want my children to be free. God is freedom and He has designed a way for that total liberation.

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ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS ON CHRISTIAN PARENTING…

All my thoughts are conversation, not a condemnation of specific families. We all have to make concrete choices and have changed opinions and behaviors as we are confronted with new circumstances. To heal it we have to be able to talk about it.

• The Lie of the Apostolate {Leaving Our Children Poor}
  "It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us." - Mother Teresa
  

• A discussion on The Question of Compulsory Mass Attendance in Schools.
  “The transmission of faith should look as little as possible like institutional school. It should be relational and be first a school of love in the heart of the family.”
  

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• For Parents of Toddlers…
  I don't know if this will help anyone out there who's got a toddler fireball on their hands, but here are some tips that have helped me over the years...
  
  Toddlerhood is an amazing time. Difficult but not "terrible." With the exception of one child who had medical issues, my toddlers didn't rage much. I don't think it had much to do with my skills; more likely that my temperament and lifestyle naturally meshed with their needs. It's not a boast, just the way it worked out.
  
  Many people act as though the goal of the toddler years is to get out of them asap. So much time and effort spent on keeping little people pacified and from disrupting adult life. Maybe it's better seen as a dynamically beautiful time of tremendous growth and learning. It should be engaged, not simply endured. Parenting takes big energy.
  
  Tips/thoughts that helped me. These are not a judgment on you:
  
  •Toddlers have a high need for their parents.
  
  •They learn (physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually) primarily through interaction with us.
  
  •Look them in the eyes often.
  
  •Talk to them often and use real words and full sentences (not baby talk).
  
  •Smile often (fake it if you have to).
  
  •Limit time with screens (days should go by).
  
  •If you don't have to put them in daycare, keep them with you.
  
  •Don't hit them.
  
  •Don't shake them.
  
  •Stop screaming at them.
  
  •React calmly to spills and falls.
  
  •Feed them when they need to eat.
  
  •Make sure they're well rested.
  
  •Be cognizant of overstimulation from noisy things and busy life.
  
  •When you are in a busy season, interrupt yourself to sit with them and do "nothing."
  
  •If they don't have siblings, play with them.
  
  •If they have attentive siblings, make sure you step in periodically to be present...
  
  •Don't confuse their primary attachment needs by being constantly absent physically or mentally even within the home.
  
  •Dance with them.
  
  •Rock them to sleep.
  
  •Read to them.
  
  •Take them (almost) everywhere with you.
  
  If these don’t make sense to you, then do what you think is best for your kids. This is just me digging deep from my years of triumphs and regrets.
  
  God bless all the toddler mamas! It’s a big and beautiful aspect of vocation. ♥️

  

• For parents of adults…
  If you’d have told me 2 years ago the trials that would follow, I might have run. But looking back, I see the evidence of Grace on all of it. I wouldn’t go back of course. Mostly because I wouldn’t be brave enough. But I also wouldn’t run. He makes all thing new in His time.
  
  This photo was at my son’s wedding and I’m holding my granddaughter from another son. Trouble finds us. Grace compounds. We get older and the young grow taller. It’s so fast. I have a lot of regrets but also praise God for every opportunity for healing. There’s always more.
  
  Blessed be God.

  

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