Ill-equipped.
That’s how I feel most days as I tackle the small people running around my house. (I’m not physically tackling them, of course, though they’ve physically tackled me a few times.)
I’m six months into the journey of becoming a stay-at-home mom, and even after six months at home, plus three and a half years of motherhood, each day I’m faced with the thought that I am so ill-equipped for the task of raising these beautiful humans.
It feels sort of an odd thought to have considering that my transition into motherhood felt super natural for me. I don’t think I’ve struggled with a sense of a loss of my individual identity, as I believe a lot of women do. Holding my babies and rocking them, nursing them to sleep, checking their boo-boos after a fall and ensuring them that they’re okay . . . that’s the easy stuff. That’s the stuff that I feel like I was made for, and those things melt away all of the hard moments from memory after a difficult day.
But in the middle of those hard moments, when my youngest won’t stop screaming for no reason at all and the bigger one is testing every morsel of patience I simply do not possess . . . in the middle of those moments when I’ve lost it and yelled and for a brief moment I’ve scared my children and made them cry or curl up and shut down completely . . . in those moments I feel totally and absolutely ill-equipped to be a mother. And certainly ill-equipped to be a stay-at-home mother considering a future of homeschooling. It feels laughable.
Consider, just the other day I’m sitting at the breakfast table with my sweet little boys, and it’s the usual routine: the big one is feeding himself some cereal (a meal he has coined “cereal in a bowl and a milk”- adorable inflections, I assure you), and I’m spooning bites of oatmeal into the little one. The big one, not quite 4 years old, is at that preschool age where I know I don’t need to be drilling him on fractions or quizzing him on history, but having him home with me fulltime, I of course want to make sure he’s still learning. He’s a pretty smart cookie, I know we’ve counted all the way up to 50 before, so I decided at breakfast that I wanted him to practice his big numbers for me. Should be super easy! But for some reason, he won’t go past 20.
“Come on, bud! I know you can count higher than that. What’s after 20?”
He gives me a little, but not enough to satisfy me. I got lots of “I don’t know” and “I can’t” and to be quite frank, those answers really irritated me.
“You do know! I know you know! Come on, what’s after 20? Go get your pop-it.”
He runs to get his big pop-it that’s numbered 1-100. I’ve used it some to have him recognize large numbers “find 46, 73 . . .” and he typically does really well. He’s excited to count, but the kid just isn’t working with me.
But rather than gently guiding him through each number, finding some creative way to make it more fun and interesting for him and to make him feel encouraged, I’m just beyond frustrated. I dismiss him and tell him, “Never mind. I guess we won’t count.” He’s so upset, he really does want to count, and he wants to count all the way to 100 now! But he keeps giving me the run around. Now he won’t count past 10. I’m over it. I toss the pop-it down to the ground and I walk away from him. I give up. He’s crying and upset, and I just lost my cool because my 3-year-old won’t count high with me.
Trying to recount it all in words doesn’t do it justice, and makes me sound a little nutty, I’m sure. I was really just trying to live up to my homeschool mom expectations for myself. But he was just trying to eat his breakfast, and I interrupted it with a very serious investigation into his counting skills before 8 a.m.
It wasn’t the great start to our day that I wanted, and if I’m honest, a lot of days home with my boys are very quickly derailed. And not by anything earth shattering and insurmountable, but just derailed by little people and their big feelings and their famous ability to not be able to put on their shoes, even though you’ve asked them six times and given them 45 minutes to do it, and it’s still not done. Not to mention, derailed by my inability to control my temper.
I knew this wouldn’t be easy. I’m very aware of myself and my sin, and I anticipated all the ways that being home with my children would stretch me. My patience is tested, daily. My anger is stoked, daily. My tone is sharp, and my voice is raised, daily. Every single day I am faced with the reality that I have fallen short. There are countless moments that wreck my spirit and discourage me in this endeavor. And what’s worse is that the people on the other end of these outbursts are the most precious to me, part of my very soul. Their tears already break my heart, but when I’m the one who’s caused them . . . well, let’s just say mom guilt is the realest real. Six months in and I thought I’d have a better handle on myself. But where mom guilt is the name of the game that the enemy plants in my head every day, the Lord whispers to my heart and says that Sanctification is the true road that I’m stumbling on.
C.S. Lewis has a great analogy from Mere Christianity that just came to mind as I mentioned sanctification:
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of- throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
Now I haven’t personally overseen the process of building a palace, but I can imagine that it takes a great deal of time. The details really matter, and six months is nothing to God. Scripture reminds me to “consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom 8:18) and to “count it all joy . . . when I meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2).
Remaining joyful through this challenging season is not easy for me. This cottage is all I’ve ever wanted, but here God has a palace prepared for me and I’m in the thick of construction. How can I be expected to remain joyful, displaying patience and gentleness at every moment when these little people force me to repeat myself a hundred times in order to complete a simple task? How is it even possible that I think I can homeschool my kids when I can’t even get past my preschooler’s disinterest and short attention span without absolutely losing my mind?
Sanctification is a process that takes a lifetime and will never be fully realized this side of heaven. God knows my sin and wants it to be crucified daily. How can I be light and salt in the world when I have such a harsh tongue? How can I bear good fruit if I neglect to abide in the only Source that can sustain me when I’m at my wit’s end? And how else can I teach my boys of God’s lovingkindness, His abundant patience, grace, and mercy, if I’m so lacking in them myself? When I slow down in the middle of my frustration and I set my heart on Him, I’m able to at least recognize my flesh wreaking havoc on my loved ones.
But what I tend to forget in that moment of vital awareness is that God’s grace is sufficient to fill the space and time between the anger and the remorse that always sets in after the fact. I am grateful for that feeling of remorse, however. That is the messy process of being sanctified in the Lord. God is showing me my sin for what it is, something ugly and unbecoming, and that revelation truly makes his offer of grace and forgiveness that much sweeter and worth clinging to for dear life. He redirects my heart and I’m able to start again tomorrow, where His mercies are always new. Thank you, Jesus!
As far as my kid goes, we haven’t revisited the big numbers yet this week. And I’ve decided it’s not a big deal, to let it go and just wait until he finds something exciting that he really wants to count (maybe jelly beans, that would really get him going!). I don’t have a textbook telling me what he should know and at what age. I’m flying by the seat of my pants here a little bit, as every parent has done before me. But I don’t think I’m missing the mark completely . . .
As my son looked up at me tonight after his bath, while I dried his little feet he said, “Mommy, you’re washing my feet just like Jesus washed his disciples’ feet!” I smiled and talked with him about serving others, loving God, and loving His people, and in moments like that, I’m encouraged. I know that he’s learning about what really matters most.
Chelsae Baxley is a new stay-at-home mom residing in Jacksonville, FL with her husband Josh, and her two boys, Max and Isaac. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Fathom Family Foundation and has a heart for encouraging others in marriage, mothering, and theology.
