Uncurated Motherhood
We’re told from the very beginning life is supposed to be beautiful. Motherhood, in particular, is supposed to be beautiful.
And with all the helpful Pinterest pins and those shiny Instagram filters and the endless articles titled “Moms Who Do These Five Things Raise Happy Kids,” mothers are constantly given the impression that motherhood should be beautiful all the time.
Like we should walk around in a permanent state of bliss marveling at our perfect children and in awe of our astoundingly beautiful lives. And if it isn’t perfect and beautiful, we should probably try a whole lot harder to make it so. Right?
I’m just as guilty as all the rest.
Before I had kids, I bought in to this story wholeheartedly. I read all the books: What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Babywise, The Five Love Languages for Children, The Baby Whisperer, Parenting with Love and Logic. And of course, I planned to use the extensive knowledge I gained from all these informative books to do it all perfectly.
My motherhood would be so beautiful!
I would breastfeed for at least a year and have my children on impeccable sleep schedules and raise babies who were born loving all fruits and vegetables and eating everything on their plates. My children would somehow be both incredible athletes and near-genius readers. I’d raise the world’s most elite prodigy children. And I would never, ever lose my temper.
Motherhood was obviously going to be another place for me to thrive!!
But then real motherhood kicked in and I had to throw all my plans right out…
Real life and real motherhood are a lot different from what I expected. Real life is hard. And mostly ordinary. And exhausting and messy and gritty…
But God always knew motherhood would be hard, messy work.
He understood exactly the ways I would struggle. He realized I would mess up and get it wrong and fall down and keep trying and love fiercely and never, ever give up.
Maybe He always meant for me to do motherhood as an imperfect human attempting to raise other imperfect little humans in a world full of trials and tragedies.
Not searching for perfection as a mom but striving only to seek Him in the middle of the mess.
