Moments For Mom

Do you like Moments for Mom? Then you may like Elisabeth's book, Calm in My Chaos: Encouragement for a Mom's Weary Soul .

Sunday, February 10, 2002

 

June 2001

Freeze Time

Part One

Can You freeze time?

Freeze these moments of so much love

That I don’t know what to do with myself

Freeze these moments of so little sleep

That I don’t remember my own name half the time

Freeze these moments of so much awe

That I can’t help but praise Your Name for these amazing gifts

Freeze these moments of so many diapers

That I change more frequently than I change my own mind

Or do I—I can’t decide?

Will You freeze time?

Because as it is, I can’t see past tomorrow

My mind can’t envision myself

As anything

Other than the mother of two under two

Who knew?

I wouldn’t have believed it if someone had told me—

Five years and two kids ago

But why not?

What else could I possibly be doing?

This is my life

So please freeze time

Stop these moments from leaving

Keep the love, and the weariness, and the awe and the diapers

Right here

For just a moment

Longer

Part Two

One day later . . .

I thought I could take my "two under two" to Target. My motive was pure. I wanted a few items of clothing—for me. (Heaven forbid!) I need something to wear. Something that would somehow fit my new body - that resembling a Dr. Seuss character. What was I thinking? After two attempts into the store—the first thwarted by whining and screaming children, the second because I was positive a clerk was about to call Child and Family Services—I left. I packed us back into the car and went home. Just like that. And they both screamed the entire way.

So, what was I was saying just yesterday? Something about freezing time? I’ve changed my mind. Please don’t freeze it. Allow it to unfold at its normal pace. And I’ll just keep a journal.

© Elisabeth K. Corcoran, 2001

Elisabeth K. Corcoran is the author of Calm in My Chaos: Encouragement for a Mom's Weary Soul. This column is original and not from her book.
posted on 12:59 AM

 

Mother's Day 2001

Proverbs 31: 28a Her children arise and call her blessed…

(…eventually...so I’ve been told…)

Mothering is a privilege that I often take for granted. It is an opportunity for growth on my part. It’s an opportunity to lay my life down (over and over and over again, I realize) for someone…but for someone that I love. For someone that God has given me.

I forget…I forget that my children are miracles. I forget that God could have chosen for me a childless life. I forget that they are sweet and precious and gifts straight from heaven. But I want to remind myself and you – mothering, stay-at-home mothering, is something that not every woman gets to do. This is not a burden – being someone’s mom is a gift.

I also think that mothering is harder than it looks. (Do I hear an ‘amen’?) I remember before I was a mom, being able to dish out advice to other mothers on how to handle their kids…or making comments in restaurants – ‘my kids will never behave like that’…

Oh my goodness – this job we have…ladies, it is the hardest career in the world, hands down. First of all, the emotional, psychological, physical and spiritual health of these little creatures pretty much rests on how we handle them the first 18 or so years of their lives…no pressure there! And secondly, let’s be honest – on occasion, it can be slightly boring and tedious…the diapers and the laundry and reading the same book for the 200th time (and it’s usually not even that good of a book!) and when did Steve from Blue’s CluesÓ actually become one of my closest friends?!

Pat yourself on the back – being a mom is hard! And we do it every day, all day, non-stop, basically with very few true breaks or perks.

But on the other hand, I believe that my life as a stay-at-home mom is sometimes better than I let on. Okay, so I sound like I’m contradicting myself a bit here. Mothering is hard. Full-time stay-at-home mothering is hard. Yes, no doubt. But…how many people do you know who go to work outside the house, can actually wear the same sweatshirt 5 days in a row? How many working people do you know that can pretty much eat whatever they want whenever they want – because the kitchen is right there all the time? How many working people do you know that can take a shower at 3 o’clock in the afternoon? Or call a girlfriend just to talk? Or run to the mall in the middle of the day? Or take a nap?

Or lay on the couch with their daughter when she asks for another story? Or look out the window at squirrels with their son for as long as they want because pretty much we have all day open to do just that?

Mothering is hard, ladies – but let’s face it…we have got a good thing going here.

© Elisabeth K. Corcoran, 2001

Elisabeth K. Corcoran is the author of Calm in My Chaos: Encouragement for a Mom's Weary Soul. This column is original and not from her book.
posted on 12:55 AM

 

May 2001

I didn’t like being a mother today. And I’m not talking about simply being frustrated. It was one thing after another with both of my kids. And I believe I outright said at one point (under my breath) – "I want to give up mothering permanently."

Could this be PMS? Possibly. Could it have been circumstantial? Maybe. Could I have been tired? Perhaps. Have I neglected spending time with God lately? Conceivably. Are any of these excuses my point? Nope.

I have this feeling more times than I want to admit – mothering does not come naturally to me. I almost feel as if I should confess this to God and ask for forgiveness. And sometimes I do. Because I feel guilty. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel like something I should be feeling (especially as an author of a book on encouraging weary mothers!). But I do feel this way. This ache. This ‘I-have-so-many-things-I-want-to-do-with-my-life (-but-I-can’t-quite-yet-because-I’m-a-mother)’ feeling that haunts me at times.

And I felt for so long that I couldn’t even utter these words out loud. What kind of woman and mother would I be if I didn’t always particularly even like being a mother? Well, I figured – since there’s nothing new under the sun, that also goes for my feelings. Chances are I am not the first woman in the world to feel this way – to feel this at-times detachment, this intangible longing, this indescribable discontentment. At least, I hope I’m not.

I have this theory. There are three kinds of women. There’s the woman who has always known (like, from birth) that she has wanted to be a mother – and she is fantastic at it, thriving in this role. (In fact, for her, it’s not a role – it is who she is to the core.) On the other end of the spectrum is the woman (also, almost from birth) who has always known that she did not want to be a mother – and she finds her womanly fulfillment in a myriad of other ways throughout her life. Then there’s the other one in the middle somewhere – the one who wants to be a mom, but is the kind that does not automatically love all children (she loves hers completely and cares infinitely for the children of her friends and extended family, but that’s about the extent of it). For her, mothering is amazing, but not necessarily the defining factor in her life.

I have always candidly believed I have fallen into the middle category. I love my kids – but this mothering thing sort of rubs me the wrong way sometimes. Requiring much more selflessness than I ever would have guessed and much more than I seem to have at my disposal to dole out. I have these longings – to do so much more, to be so much more…a longing to still be the one being taken care of, instead of the consummate caregiver…

Yes, I have dreams. Some can wait for me and my season of life to change. And some will not. Yes, I have yearnings and discontentments that drive me to question my commitment to my children. But something I know for sure – I have been handed two children. God could have chosen a childless life for me. But, for whatever reason, He didn’t. He, the Creator and Guide of my life, knew the best goals for my life and the best ways to get me there. And He knows my struggles – inside and out – and He is just waiting for me to hand them back over to Him.

And so that is what I must do. Do the next thing – take the next step – wake up the next day and meet my children’s needs. All the while – allowing my God to walk with me and bring me closer to what He wants me to be, which technically should be my ultimate goal and dream anyway. So I’ll chase after that dream – the one that can be attained no matter the season of life…

© Elisabeth K. Corcoran, 2001

Elisabeth K. Corcoran is the author of Calm in My Chaos: Encouragement for a Mom's Weary Soul. This column is original and not excerpted from her book.
posted on 12:52 AM

 

April 2001

"Therefore, whoever humbles {herself} like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 18:4

Sara, 4, had asked to pray before our breakfast this morning. That is quite typical of her. I think it’s more her penchant to take charge than her avid spiritual growth as of yet. But I happily obliged as it still does something to my heart to hear that little girl of mine talk to our heavenly Father.

She started off per usual. Thank You for mommy, thank You for daddy, thank You for Jack. Then she added, And thank You for me. She has yet to come across that place in life where you feel silly or full of yourself in bringing any sort of attention to who you are as a person. As adults, we’d probably be a bit taken aback to hear a fellow pray-er at our Bible study thank God for herself. But if you think about…I think the situation is less that she hasn’t quite learned prayer etiquette, and more that she may know more than we as grown-ups do. Why not thank God for ourselves? He made us as much as he made the other people we thank him for. We have as much value as those other people do. And I bet, if we began to sprinkle our prayers every now and then with a small ‘thank you for me’, I just bet we’d start to see our value though his eyes. And that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

She then moved on to the rest of her list of thanks. Sara has not yet progressed much past the thanksgiving kind of prayers. She doesn’t ask God for anything. She doesn’t confess much either. (That will need to come…) She just thanks him. And today, I noticed exactly what she was thanking him for. She went through her routine of thanking him for breakfast, and her pretty clothes, and thank You that I’m beautiful again today (no self-esteem issues with this little girl). But then I heard her saying, And thank You for dolly needing to be fixed and… Did you catch that? Because I almost didn’t. She didn’t ask God to fix her dolly. She simply thanked him for her dolly dilemma. Now, I’m sure she wasn’t hoping to teach me some huge theological lesson in that moment…but wow, did she ever. What if I stopped, just for a day even, asking God for stuff? Asking him to fix things in my life? Asking him to change this or that circumstance? What if – what if I just thanked him for all of my situations as is? How might my life be different? How might I see God and my current status differently…if instead of complaining to him or asking him for a quick-fix, I just rested where I was at that moment…searching for his hand and for any lesson I could glean…and thanked Him for it?

Maybe I’ll just have to find out.

© Elisabeth K. Corcoran, 2001

Elisabeth K. Corcoran is the author of Calm in My Chaos: Encouragement for a Mom's Weary Soul. This column is original and not excerpted from her book.
posted on 12:37 AM

 

March 2001

I did it again! I swear, I can’t seem to get this mothering thing down. Sara, my 4-year-old, was simply in my way as I was trying to walk across the kitchen…this wasn’t deliberate disobedience on her part, by any means. And I yelled at her. The feeling in the pit of my stomach when I do that – it just makes me sick.

Okay, so I had a few options right at that moment. Pretend I didn’t just snap at her for no reason and move on with life.

Start beating myself up for being a lousy mother.

Or fix it.

Well, if I did the pretending game, then I would have taught my daughter a couple things. One, you can be mean to someone and not have to apologize for it. And I would have been basically saying to her that she wasn’t a very important person. Neither of those lessons were ones I wanted to pass on.

I could have gone the guilt route. Heaping a weight on my shoulders that left me feeling unfit to mother Sara. Carrying around blame much longer than necessary and therefore turning my day into a waste of time.

Or I could have taken care of the situation. And, thankfully, at that moment, I chose this high road. (Unfortunately, I don’t always…) I went to Sara, knelt down, looked her in the eyes, and said, "I am sorry for yelling at you and hurting your feelings. Mommy was wrong." She said, "I forgive you, Mommy. I was frustrated with you, too." (Ahh, the honesty of a child…) Then I took it a step farther. I then asked God for his forgiveness and asked him for patience and help the next time I was about to lose it.

I felt better almost instantly after taking care of it that way. Confess, repent, move on. The lesson I taught my daughter in that moment was that yes, mommy is human and will mess up a lot; however, it can be made right when you choose to, and you can be granted forgiveness and a clean slate.

And I learned that my daughter and my God are very forgiving.

© Elisabeth K. Corcoran, 2001

Elisabeth K. Corcoran is the author of Calm in My Chaos: Encouragement for a Mom's Weary Soul . This column is original and not excerpted from her book.

posted on 12:18 AM