One more load of little onesies: A blog rant

Brace yourselves for a blog rant. Sorry. Sort of. Ok, maybe not really. Whatevs. Here goes...

A friend of mine recently posted on FB that some mornings she wished so much she could just crawl back into bed and sleep, without anyone touching her or talking to her or calling out "Mom" over and over. She is a beautiful person and a really great mother. I read her post and thought, "Amen, sista'." Then I read the responses. In one of them, a fellow mother told her something along these lines, "Oh, treasure these times. They go so fast, one day you'll wish you could have this time back. Just love it!" She supported her point by posting an exceedingly sentimental song/video thing about "wishing you could have those years back again." I understand what she was going for there, but, honestly, for me--not helpful. At all. 

To me, when someone says, "I'm having a hard time as a mother today," if you answer, "Oh, don't wish it away!! It goes so fast!!", you are adding to the problem. You are correcting and rebuking instead of supporting and loving, which evokes guilt instead of hope. Now, that person not only has  to deal with her tough mama-day; she also has to wonder if she has done something wrong by having a tough mama-day at all. Double fail.

With the deepest part of my heart, I love being a mother. I grew, birthed, and nursed four babies in 6 1/2 years. It was (is) exhausting to me. I would do it all over again in a moment. I don't have words to describe the beauty and preciousness that is motherhood. I cry when my kids go to kindergarten. I didn't think I'd be a crier, but I totally am. I am sure I will cry like a baby all throughout their senior slide show and when we send them off on missions or to college or whatever, and a billion times in between now and then. I know will miss them horribly. But even knowing all that, a part of me still feels frustrated when people tell me to "enjoy every moment", or say things like "what I wouldn't give to wash one more load of little onesies" or--my personal favorite--"I loved every minute of raising my babies". Really? Every minute? I highly doubt that. What about the minutes when you were scrubbing vomit from in between crib slats in the middle of the night? Or the minutes where you watched your little one sleep in a hospital crib with IV's coming out of him because he couldn't breathe right, and you worried for him as you ached for your kids still at home whom you had hardly seen in days? Did you love those minutes too?

Motherhood is a package deal. It's wonderment, joy, beauty, and feeling close to heaven, combined with incredible fatigue, hesitancy, desperation, and frustration. The highs are inextricably linked with the lows. You get to rock your sweet, sweaty, sleeping toddler while you sing to him and stroke his hair, and then later you get to put that same sweet toddler in time-out for screaming and biting his sister. You can't wish nostalgically for one moment without wishing for the other, too.

My favorite motherhood moments take my breath away...watching a sleeping baby in footie pajamas with her knees tucked up under her so her little bum is up in the air. Giving birth. Holding an infant for the first time--new, perfect, tiny, pure, fuzzy, mine, God's. Listening to my kids laugh in the dark together after I have tucked them in bed. Reading a book to a toddler on my lap. Illogical conversations with a three year old. Sincere and deep conversations with an eight year old. Listening to their testimonies of Jesus Christ. Holding caterpillars. Realizing your kids is old enough to be sincerely funny. Watching them be brave or kind. Stuff like that makes me crazy excited for all the years ahead and all the new favorite moments that will come as they grow older.

But the hard stuff is...sincerely hard. And if I'm honest, I do not enjoy every moment. I enjoy that I HAVE the moments. I feel deeply grateful that I have been able to bear children and raise them myself--the magnitude of that gift never feels far from my mind. It is one of my very, very favorite blessings. I love and am grateful for their health, their vibrancy, their uniqueness...I am grateful for their very existence. But it's not all cupcakes and roses. It was never meant to be. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed, wildly incompetent, tired, heavy-hearted, or short-tempered. At those time, I still feel gratitude--always gratitude--but not necessarily enjoyment. And I think that's ok. Some times are just tough. 

So...I guess the moral here is that I hope one day, in fifteen years, when Dave and I have launched all our children, instead of saying, "What I wouldn't give to have our babies back again!" I will look at him and say something like this, "I'm so glad we got to raise our babies. I miss the good things. There were a lot of those. But I am glad the tough things are behind us. It feels right that we are where we are. We had a good run, didn't we?" And then we will hold hands and move on to the next phase of blessings and challenges. And when I hear a tired, young mom tell me she wishes her kid would sleep through the night or that she could have one quiet afternoon to herself, I hope I don't judge her. I hope I respond by smiling and saying something like, "Yeah, it can be tough, can't it? I remember it. You're doing a great job. Hang in there. Can I hold that sweet baby for you for a little while?"

And I think we will both be better for it.

Without question, open-mouthed baby kisses belong in the "Favorite Moments" category. No room for discussion on that one. :)