Parenting

When we drive into the parking lot of our local grocery store, they swoop away in a nervous flapping of wings. Dozens of solid white seagulls, floating and landing around the asphalt like the pictures in children’s Bibles of manna in the desert. I guess that’s what they’re hoping for–manna. Or even better, a few stray french fries. They flutter around, up and down, always here in this parking lot, winter or summer. And I wonder, “why?” I don’t live near the ocean. I am a good 2-3 hours by car from the coast. I don’t know how they got here, and I feel sorry for them. I feel like rolling down my window to say, “Um, excuse me, but don’t you know you’re supposed to be on the beach? Why in the heck aren’t you at the beach?” If I were a seagull, I’d be at the beach.

Here’s the part when my husband starts to worry that I am going to give some kind of analogy about how I’m a seagull in a parking lot because we don’t live at the beach. Breathe easy, Mr. Mia, I’m not going in that direction. Not today, anyway…

Today I’m relating to those seagulls in parking lots when it comes to the mom life. Sometimes I feel kind of lost, like I’m not quite the right casting fit for this role. It’s not an overwhelming soul discontent; it’s a building up of little monotonies that make me feel like I’m losing my identity. It’s the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I ate for lunch (which I despise). It’s the sugary cereal I bought because I told my kids they could pick out one treat for being so good at the doctor’s office. I think sugary cereal is the worst possible way to start our day, but we’ll all be eating it tomorrow morning. It’s the four full albums of kids music in one day of errands. It’s the number of pictures of Strawberry Shortcake I’ve colored in the last week. Okay, I actually really like coloring. But it’s all those other things I do or eat or say that make me ask myself, “Who am I?”

And come Monday morning, when all of this crashes down as my husband heads to work and I struggle with feelings of inadequacy to fill this huge role in my children’s lives, the answer to the question of Who I Am is too often “Impostor.”

The definition of impostor is “a person who deceives others by pretending to be someone else.”

Yeah, that rings true on Mondays. Or Tuesdays. Or many other days in between. Days when a mom is just too tired to be enthusiastic about playing, even though deep down it’s really her favorite thing. Days when it seems like a huge, insurmountable chore to tidy up the living room and think of something to cook for dinner. Days when you’ve listened to your teenager’s music selection for weeks now and you have just had enough. You know, those days. On those days, I’m pretty sure my precocious daughter can see right through me as she thinks, “Hmph. You’re not fooling me.” Her eyes say it when I admit we’re out of milk again, or that we don’t have enough time to watch that video I promised her, or we didn’t get around to painting her fingernails like I said we would. And a voice in my head whispers,” She’s right. I am an impostor. I’m not really good at this whole full-time mom thing.”

Am I a little overly sensitive to a four-year-old’s unspoken (possibly, please Lord, imagined) criticism? Yes. Yes, I am. Because I know it. I know that I am not a natural at this. I feel like a seagull in a parking lot. Like I’m trying to get into this role I’m not really cut out for. If I fail so badly at this some days, it can’t really be what I’m cut out for, can it?

However. Those seagull-in-a-parking-lot days are not every day. There are days mixed in when there is a sense of rightness in my life as I butter the bread for grilled cheese sandwiches and wash and fold laundry. I can be doing the exact same things on different days and feel completely different about them. Possibly I’m an emotional basket case? Possibly. But I don’t think so. I think we all come at our days sometimes feeling like impostors, like this job, whatever it is, is too hard and too taxing and it can’t really be what we’re meant for. Compound this with the loss of a lot of things we used to base our identity on–careers, sports, friendships, charity work, and so on– and it really shouldn’t be a surprise that some days parents are sure they’re misfitted in an identity that is based so much on other people.

That feeling is an especially big deal to most mothers, and it’s hard to conquer those feelings that you’re lost in something too big, that you’re not suited for this mom-life, that you just want to feel like your contributing an intelligent thought in a conversation with other adults once in a while. Here’s what I and my fellow parents need to remember: who we are hasn’t completely changed, but it has altered in a lot of ways. I would be a pathetic mother if this gift-filled, hard, joyful journey hadn’t rounded off some rough edges and penetrated my heart. I wouldn’t be worth much to my children if I didn’t consider them worthy of a sacrifice in my likes and dislikes. I’m not saying you have to love reading “Moo, Baa, La La La!” five times in a row or that teaching 3rd grade math has to be your favorite pastime all of a sudden because it’s part of your life. Because you know that’s just dumb. But you’re not doing “worthless” things and you’re still you and you’re becoming somebody better than the “you” whom you used to be. And so am I.

The days aren’t always easy, but we are right where we are supposed to be. If God gave you these children and this infinitely precious opportunity to spend time with them, He made you for it. He knows you won’t always get it right, and He is okay with that. Can you and I be okay with that? Can we get our wings wet and still try to fly because He makes us able to do what He needs us to do? That’s my prayer for you and me and all the parents out there today who some days wake up feeling like they’re out of place in their own lives. You are “Mommy.” You are “Daddy.” You are right where you are supposed to be.

I was driving down the road, thinking deeply about at least four different issues at the same time. The kids were listening to Psalty in the backseat. Listening to Psalty usually means I don’t have to talk for a blessed little while. But Ella had something on her mind.

“Mommy?”

“Yeah?” I turned down the volume and dragged my brain back into the car.

“In the Rapunzel movie (Tangled), the bad guys become good guys!”

“Yep, it’s pretty cool.”

“But there are still some bad guys. Who are those guys trying to chase Eugene?”

“The Stabbington Brothers?”

“Yeah, why are they chasing him.”

“Because they want everything Flynn has, the crown and then Rapunzel’s magic hair.”

“Why do they want all that?”

“They’re greedy.”

“Oh.”

I turned the volume back up. But a twitch in my brain got stronger in the next few seconds. Here was my four-year-old daughter, asking me questions about good and evil, probing into a topic that is prevalent in stories and in real life, and I was trying to stay on the surface and wrap our conversation up neatly so I could get back to figuring out all the stuff.

I turned the volume back down. “That happens a lot, doesn’t it? In stories and movies, there are people who are bad guys because they want more money or power, right?”

“Yeah. Could you turn it up please?”

Opportunity lost. And this image came to mind, of me, with an old-fashioned plow. Now, I’m not a farmer. My children aren’t soil. But bear with me in this Little House on the Prairie imagery. I had this image of me with that old-fashioned plow, my hands on the handles and my horse and I walking along at a brisk pace, quickly going over the top layer of soil. “Well, that was easier than I though it would be!” I said to myself as I brushed my hands off and called it a day. But I had gone so fast and wanted it to be so easy, I had barely turned over any soil. That is not a field that will reap a good harvest. That is a field that hasn’t had the rich soil underneath tilled up and broken into fertile ground. Am I that surface farmer every day when  it comes to raising my children? I can skim along, check a day of activities off, and I can be a surface farmer, just going over the fields with the plow in the fastest and straightest manner, getting it done without getting too dirty and exhausted. But what have I actually accomplished? What I need to do is push the plow down, blister up my hands, break a sweat, and get down to the rich matter below the surface.

I thought about this idea for a few moments in that car ride, wondering if my analogy actually made any logical sense, when my breath caught in my throat. Because, hold on, my children actually are soil! In the Bible, Jesus gives a parable about a sower:

3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.” Matthew 13:3-9, NIV

Okay, so this daily sowing of my children’s minds and hearts just got a lot more serious. As a parent, my ultimate goal is to plant seeds in them: seeds of wisdom, seeds of truth, seeds of love, all kinds of seeds. And how tragic would it be if I didn’t prepare them for those seeds first? What if I just let them stay shallow soil? Then the seeds I plant will sprout soon after sowing, and I’ll think, “Good! My work is done here.” But there will be no root to the sprouts because that soil wasn’t tilled and prepared. That wisdom or love or truth will dry up and vanish. Yeah, I’ve seen that happen. And I’ve seen parents replant. I’m guessing there’s a lot of replanting involved in this whole process, and it lasts a lifetime. What makes my heart thud even now when I think of all of this is that I only have a small window of opportunity to condition the soil of the soul. There is so much more that goes into the shaping of person than a parent or two parents or an entire village pouring into a child. I’m thankful for that, but I’m also mindful that my chance to make deep furrows are at their finest right now.

I always thought I’d like to be a farmer, and I guess I kind of am. The good cultivators in any walk of life get exhausted, get grimy, and get very involved with the work of their hands. I have to remember that when I just feel like combing the soil over, gliding over the surface without changing the make up of the field. I don’t want to be a surface farmer. I want to pull up the thorns and weeds and plow deep into the richness below, where the seeds can flourish into a legacy my children will keep forever.

A note for any already exhausted mamas and daddies out there: you are doing good work. This post is in pursuit of refining and reaching higher, not loading on the guilt. I know there are days when I’ve done the best I can and it still isn’t pretty. I only want to share an idea that is helping me remember what really matters in the time I spend with my young children. I hope it will help you in some way, too.