This is the Way Everywhere

I was hunting for a towel to stop my screaming babe from, well, screaming.  In the five years I lived in South Africa, I startled, scared, and was reprimanded for 'wearing' my children on my back.  In the US, it's an odd costume, not because people think it's wrong per say, but because most of the moms who buy baby carriers never figure out how to put said baby anywhere but on their front.  My belly soon got in the way of that.  And I saw.  I saw these women, everywhere putting children, big and teeny tiny on their backs with towels.  They did this in cold and rain, they did it in the heat of summer.  So, I braved embarrassment and judgement in the middle of the Apartheid Museum when Em was still so small.  I asked someone who knew how to put a kid on her back and said, "teach me."  I'm not sure Sister Jos would remember that moment, but it was a poignant moment in my parenting journey.

In that moment, I realized that this is what mothers everywhere do.  Not really strapping babes to their body so that they can go about their work.  Every culture throughout the world has some way of doing this.  But more than that, mothers across the globe get stuck with some momentary dilemma, like how to get a baby to sleep in the middle of the Apartheid Museum, and they figure out a way to make it right.  This is the way of motherhood.  We stumble, we get overwhelmed, then we find a way.  Our way.  Some way out.  Out of the sleep deprivation.  Out of our daughters desperate need for sparkly-sandals-in-the-middle-of-winter battle.  Out of the I-refuse-to-brush-my-teeth moment.  Out of the days when laundry and chores, kids and homework threaten to swallow us whole.

I feel there.  Like a thousand small things are going to swallow me whole.  The insistent questions of "when am I going to go back to school" and "what are we going to do today" are going to be the end of me.  My heart is pulling.  Edges are wearing.  It is hard, so very, very hard to see the fraying edges on my children.  I wear Big Girl Shoes so I can deal with the fall out of everything that has happened in the last two months.  Two months.  That's all it's been.  Two.

 All four ready for the first of three flights to get us back to the US of A.

My kids, though, are little.  They understand but don't understand why.  They don't understand what's going on and frankly, they will most likely never understand what has happened.  I know that kids are resilient.  I know they're young.  I know they'll be just fine.  But this is the way of motherhood everywhere.

We worry.  We worry before they're born.  Am I the right person for this child?  Am I prepared for the task at hand?  How is this going to change me?  Change my relationships?  What if I mess this up?  What if they blame me for... This is the way of motherhood everywhere.

We protect... some more than others but we chose the things we feel are important.  Don't touch the hot stove.  Don't eat food you may choke on.  Don't walk near moving cars by yourself.  Don't say foul words.  This is the way of motherhood, everywhere.

I fear I've ruined everything.  My kids went from a normal, stable situation to instability and upheaval.  Todd and I can't seem to find up from down, east from west right now.  And really, what's the point of moving when you don't know which direction to move?  So we've been standing in our own footsteps, trying to find a point of reference, gain some bearings.  I don't think God has been quiet so much as I've just been trying to quiet the loud voices inside my own head, in my own heart.  There are moments in motherhood when we listen to the wrong voices.  The voices that say we're not good enough, not patient enough, not kind enough, or working too much.  The voice that says to put the sleeping baby down because a floor needs to be scrubbed or the voice that says you're a horrible mother for going to work.  The voice that says you're a terrible mother for not having it all together or the voice that says you're not doing enough.  It's an insidious voice and a voice that persists, a lot.  One I have listened to too often in this mothering journey.

The one I listen to because I forget.  I forget that The Voice that spoke the universe into being also looked at me and said YOU ARE GOOD.  I forget that The Voice that spoke the first Love and Light into the world also spoke love and light into my heart.  The Voice that calls me to show that same Love, that same Light to my children.  I've forgotten that in the past few weeks, and I've lost my mothering way... again.  And I feel like even here I can claim that this is the way of motherhood everywhere.

I'm not the only one who has felt lost, alone, without someone who understands.  I'm not the only one who is up at zero dark-thirty because I forgot to listen to Truth and started listening to the lies that plague mothers everywhere.  So here, in these footprints of uncertainty, with doubts and worries all around, I'm reaching out in the darkness because I know there will be a hand next to me of the mother with her new baby thinking that she's overfeeding or underfeeding her baby, that she's ruined her child's life (and her's) because her 17 month old is still not sleeping, that her four year old will never forgive her for having another baby or the mom who isn't sure she is a mom because she has no babe in her arms.  This is the way of motherhood everywhere.  We hold on to Truth, even if its nameless, faceless hope from generations past, present, or future because this job is huge.  This job we face is monumental and it's bigger than age, race, ethnicity, language, creed or situation.  But we hold on, for our children, for us, for the very fabric of our souls because we know the Truth.  The One who gave us these kids loves them more than we do, He cares for them better than we ever could, and He gave them to us to teach us, instruct us, and mold us into better, wiser people.  Because this is the way of motherhood everywhere.