Notes From My Journey

I went to my first baby shower 13 years ago. At the shower, one of the activities was to write a little note on a card for the new mom. It was meant to be just a little bit of advice or encouragement. Well, the end of the shower came and someone read the cards. They were all lovely messages or helpful Bible verses….all except for one. One of the cards talked about the terrible way that mashed banana would stain anything and about how quickly rice cereal left in a bowl would turn to a substance closely resembling cement. Guess who wrote about banana stains and rice cereal? That’s right, me. My writing about bananas and rice cereal was a clear testimony to where I was on the journey of motherhood – trying to feed a ravenous, chunky 9-month-old baby boy.

Giving advice — other than the extremely practical — is a bit difficult for me. I mostly just assume that everybody else has already got things better figured out than I do. So, when my friend recently called to ask me to speak at a baby shower that I would be attending, I didn’t know what to say. I told her that I could do it, I mean, I’m a mother, right? I should be able to come up with something to say, hopefully? It wasn’t more than a few seconds after I hung up the phone that I turned my mind toward thinking about motherhood. I thought and then I thought some more. Basically, I heard a whole bunch of crickets chirping inside my head.

It is just such a vast thing, motherhood, and hard to sum up.

In the end, I just ended up coming up with 5 things that I’ve learned along the way on my own journey of motherhood. Everybody on every reality T.V. show – it seems like all they talk about is their “journey”. So, I’m sorry to be asking this overtaxed word to work for me here, but it is really the most descriptive word that I can use. Why do I classify motherhood as a journey? Well, because motherhood really seems to me to be like a journey – a really long journey that you can never pack or plan adequately for. You can try to bring the correct things with you and learn about the ground that you are about to cover, but so often, it is as if we mothers are like Bugs Bunny when he took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and ended up somewhere totally unplanned.

So, here it is, my little talk that I did at the baby shower. Hopefully it’ll make sense to y’all. Remember, watch out for the mashed banana!

The Journey of Motherhood: Reflections from the Road

1. Journeys are transformative. Humans are little catalogs in that what we experience along the way colors our perspective forever. For example, you may have seen many a canyon in your life but the sight of each new one affects how you will perceive every other canyon you will ever come across. Motherhood is like that in that it takes things that you may have thought that you knew before and adds another layer of meaning. For instance, I thought I knew what love was before I had my first child. Now, I did know about love – just not this ferocious, Mama Bear love that I immediately had for my baby. Another example is fatigue. Before I had my first son I really thought that I knew what tired was. It turns out that it was a whole new kind of tired. For the rest of my life, I’m going to evaluate love and fatigue and everything in light of being a mother. I can’t help it.

2. Journeys bring out the explorer in each of us. When you have a child, you embark on a journey that no one has ever been on before. Yes, folks the world over and all through history have gone on very similar trips, but this little child of yours has never been until now. When she smiles for the first time, you will see it. You will be the first to see this little human do many things and not only gross motor accomplishments of the toddler set. You’ll see many things first. There is much to appreciate and be proud of – the first time your child stands up for what’s right, when she first shows caring for others, when she graduates from college someday after much hard work and studying, etc. The list of these firsts goes on and on. They are different for each child and always something to be thankful for.

3. Journeys help us to appreciate the different means of travel. Much of your journey of motherhood is going to be just fantastic. Large portions of the trip might be gorgeous and uneventful and effortless like when you drive through mountains and see one beautiful view after the next. But, this is not heaven, as wonderful as it can seem at times, and eventually the weather will turn. You may find yourself in unknown surroundings. Maybe you find yourself in a dark, foggy forest and all you have is a flashlight. You can only see to the end of your flashlight beam. So you walk to the end of what you can see and then you do that again, over and over. Now, this is not the preferred way of travel, but you can go the whole way in this fashion, if you have to. On this particular leg of the journey you may not be rewarded with one lovely view after another, but you might, in time, appreciate this bit of the journey even more because of how you learned to persevere along the way and because it helped you realize the minute by minute faithfulness of God. This God who had shown you beautiful vistas in the past is the same God who never let your flashlight go out. You might see the blessing of realizing how far you can go by just putting one foot in front of the other.

4. Journeys are better with fellow travelers. Even though this journey you are on is unique to you in many ways, there are travelers who have been this way before. These fellow travelers (a.k.a. the community of mothers that you have around you) rejoice with you when your journey is going wonderfully. We are there also if you hit a rocky patch. Mothers are thrilled to help other mothers. It is just something about the whole bunch of us, I suppose, that makes us want to make the way easier for another mom. So call on your fellow travelers to help you, if you need it. For instance, if you find yourself somewhere unexpected and you feel overwhelmed and it seems to be the monsoon season in this place, well, nothing would please a fellow traveler more than to tell you where the ponchos are. If we can’t find the poncho store, well, we’d love to share our umbrella with you, and, even if we have never been to Monsoonville ourselves we still want to do whatever we can to help. Trust us, we’ve been other places that we did not expect ourselves and we know how awful it is to be wet all the time.

5. Journeys change us for the better. I’ve heard many a mother exclaim that, what with all of her responsibilities on every side, that she feels as though she has lost herself somewhere along the journey of motherhood. Now, I have a couple of things to say about this. The first thing is that, yes, journeys are long. Every once in a while you need to stop and rest your feet. As mothers on a long journey, it is vital that we recognize when we need a break. In fact, I will go so far as to say that, when we take a break from mothering (nothing grandiose…going for a coffee, taking in a movie, having a quick walk around the block) and give ourselves time to regroup it is like a gift to our children, as well, because we are taking away a frazzled mother whose emotions are getting a little frayed around the edges and replacing her with a mother who, if not perfectly restored, at least is a little less frazzled and has managed to neaten up fraying edges. The other thing that I will say about the woman who wails that she has lost herself along the way is that she is right, she has lost herself. Back to our journey, if we see something stunning or have a beautiful, life-altering experience along the way, are we really going to be the same person we were before? No, and thank goodness for that. We’re going to be someone different, someone who has had experiences that, good and bad, we wouldn’t trade for anything.

Now, I’m going to close by quoting Chesterton. Always close your talk with eloquence, that’s my motto.

”To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”
~ G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World.

Have a good Tuesday, y’all!