A young mother-to-be said with despair, “Only three weeks left to figure out how to be a mother!”
Oh, sweet new momma, I am still trying to figure that out fifteen years later. I don’t mean to scare you, but this is the truth.
You will find your groove, yes, and figure out the basics like which type of diapers you prefer and where to find the sales on baby food. But even if you become a mother twenty times over, uncertainty will remain. Because just when you think you’ve got it figured out, the rules change, or the kids change, or you change.
You will make more mistakes than you’re willing to count. Like, for instance, letting your six year old eat the party favor that you swear is white chocolate but is actually decorative soap. (Yes, I did that.)
You will realize after several hundred of these foibles that a sense of humor is an essential item to pack in the diaper bag. And it is precisely these times that earn you a notch in your parenting stick. These falls from grace won’t guarantee that your next act will be seamless, but they will remind you that you can do the hard job of parenting AND live to tell about it.
If you are a ‘good’ parent you will never enjoy the smugness of certainty. You will doubt every major and some minor decisions, feel guilty about others, and learn something new every day. Early on you may learn that you shouldn’t play airplane with a baby who has just eaten lest he spit up in your mouth. (That was husband, not me.) Later, you may learn that you are not above ditching your child in a grocery store when she shouts, “Why is that lady so fat?” And you will be anointed with humility when your little one declares aloud in church, “Mommy, you tooted!”
I wish my gift to you could be a key to the Parenting Answer Box. But in my heart I know that if there was such a key to be given, it would ruin the whole experience. If you had all the answers and didn’t crumble in despair once in a while, you’d never know the sweetness of vulnerability. Just when you think you can’t go on, your little one reaches up to wipe a tear from your eye and says, “I wuv you, Mommy. Pwease don’t cry.” Renewed afresh, your heart fills up and you rise from the ashes.
When we stop banging on the door of certainty, demanding reprieve from the worry and fear of parenting, we realize that we are not alone. Looking around, we find ourselves amidst the stories of millions of parents before us who stood exactly where we now stand, unable to break through the barrier of doubt.
There is no pot of gold at the end of the child-rearing rainbow. And the treasure is not what you think it is. It is not an honors student who never got arrested, never sassed his parents, and never skipped out on chores. Nor is it a perfect parenting record that is envied by your fellow retirees. The gift is simply this: THE EXPERIENCE – good, bad, or otherwise.
Some day you will look back and wonder how you survived. You will also continue to question your choices long after the children are grown. But with any luck, you will have learned at least, to abandon blame and shame in favor of forgiveness and gratitude. You dared to take on the title of parent in the name of love, despite your humongous fears, and did the best you could.
Chaos & Clarity 