You are Not the Only One

I was talking to one of me dear sister's in law the other day who recently had her third baby. They just moved to a new place and find themselves without much community, a hardship that is most burdensome to the stay at home mom.  We were talking about her kids and she admitted to being overwhelmed sometimes with three (something I find people are remiss to admit to me sometimes just because I have more children, but believe me I was overwhelmed long before we got to six!).  Then she said with a meek and shameful tone in her voice "I think I am the only mom who yells at her kids."    My response probably should have been one of quiet assurance and sympathy but it went more like this: "BHAAAAA! Are you kidding me?! Should I run down the litany of ridiculous things I have done today to make you feel better?"

That's the funny thing about motherhood.  You know you aren't alone, that there are millions of moms out there doing the same thing you are. Millions of us, around the world, that get up and think about everyone but ourselves for hours (sometimes days) at a time.  We forgo the shower, sniff our clothes to see if we can wear them one more time, get our exercise while wearing people, or while navigating yoga poses around the toddler asking for goldfish with no regard to your concerns about maintaining a decent heart rate.  We think about dinner with a looming dread as soon as we get the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher; we coordinate schedules, and clean toilets (and if you have boys this mostly consists of constantly cleaning the pee off the floor and never quite eradicating the odor it leaves behind); we teach, entertain, referee, and on a good day save time and energy to listen to (or on a really good day have sex with) our husbands.  We are not alone and yet most women often feel like they are the only ones that don't love this job every second, the only ones that feel frustration or guilt or shame about the mistakes we make, the only one that dreams about running away without telling any one and escaping to Mexico where there are free-flowing margaritas and sun and quiet.

So today I thought I would give you a peek into just a few of my mistakes, the things I feel guilty about and the habits I convince myself no one else has. Hopefully it will remind you you are not alone, or at least convince you that your kids are better off then mine!

Television: 
The Rule: No TV on weekdays for the school-aged children and no TV for the little ones until after nap time.
What Really Happens: My sad attempt at craft time ends with paint all over the floor and my clean shirt (which I was planning on wearing for 2 more days) the 3 year old hits the 2 year old with his paint brush, she screams and pours her paint out on the table meanwhile the baby pulls the plastic table cloth (where incidentally none of the spilled paint has ended up) so hard that the water cups spill until finally I pick up all the paint brushes and say as cheerfully as I can through gritted teeth "who wants to watch a Curious George?"

Sugar
The Rule: No sugar during the day and only in the evening if you have finished your dinner with a cheerful attitude.
What Really Happens: We have a busy morning with 2 doctors visits and remarkably everyone has held it together, then I remember that I have to get bread and milk or there will be nothing for lunches and I will have to go to the store at 8:30pm when I am half asleep, and I'll end up buying Ben and Jerry's and 7 other things I do not need. So we brave the isles and all is well for about 2 minutes, until the toddlers start fighting and the baby starts crying and before you know it I have closed their mouth holes with 2 donuts and pretend we are running "for fun" to the back of the store where they strategically keep the milk so that desperate mothers like me will end up buying donuts, at noon, before they feed their kids lunch.

Fast Food
The Rule:  I will cook dinner a minimum of 6 days a week and it will be balanced and healthy and if you don't like it you can have a PBJ or go hungry.
What Really Happens:  I forgot to thaw the hamburger for the tacos, and didn't really want that anyway, and then my husband is unexpectedly delayed at work. I consider the groans I'll get when I put said taco meet in front of a toddler and then I decide it would be easier to pile the kids in the car and drive through Wendy's. I'll cut up an apple or something and then it will be balanced, right? At least the baby will get a good meal...would you like a side of fries with that breast milk?

Yelling
The Rule: We do not raise our voices to each other; we do not yell to get our way; mommy will only yell when you are in danger and not when she is angry.
What actually happens:  Eight-year-old yells at six-year-old, six-year-old whines and cries, three-year-old pushes six-year-old and suddenly eight-year-old is defending six-year-old by yelling at three-year-old to stop. Two-year-old wants juice, we don't have juice, two-year-old starts screaming and moaning while the aforementioned three-year-old hits the aforementioned eight-year-old and the noise and chaos wakes the sleeping 9 month old. I decide they are in danger, of being strangled, and I yell "EVERYONE STOP YELLING RIGHT THIS MINUTE!" I threaten to take away TV, video games, food, water, a soft bed and  give every toy they own to the poor, and finally they stop....for now.

Bathing
The Rule: Big kids shower a minimum of four days a week, babies get baths every other night, or nightly if particularly dirty at the end of the day.
What Really Happens: It's the end of the day in a series of many long days, I realize the big boys haven't showered in 3 days so I sniff their hair and decide they can go one more day if it means they will be in bed sooner.  I am nursing the baby and notice some unidentifiable crust behind his ear and realize I cannot remember the last time he had a bath so I give him a good scrub with a wipe and promise to get him and his stinky sister in the tub tomorrow.

Then there's bribing (do it), family prayer time (do it every night, but hardly ever make it through more than 1 decade of the rosary and that is usually painful or it's one Our Father and a kiss goodnight), house work (don't do it enough; my 9 month old ate at least 1/4 cup of old cheerios off the floor today before I knew what was happening), quality time (does diaper changing count? or signing homework folders?) reading (we are half way through The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, and the Hobbit, and Charlotte's Web...my six-year-old has taken it upon himself to finish these without me).  You get the point.

But then, there's all the laughter and the moments where their character and kindness show through all the chaos. There are the nights when you do all sit down to dinner and they eat it, when you do all pray and they mean it, when they listen to the story and they get it. Or none of those things happen but at the end of the day they hug you tight and tell you they love you and you realize they don't care if they're dirty, or if they ate fries for dinner and they don't remember you losing your temper they just love you and they are happy to be alive and ready to get up and love you all over again.  They don't keep score, they don't hold grudges, and it never occurs to them that you might be failing at anything.  So next time you feel like a failure ask yourself who is telling you that; I promise it's not that little guy looking up at you calling you mommy.

Does This Baby Make Me Look Fat?

Ever since starting this blog I have considered tackling the all consuming topics of beauty, body image and self esteem.  But where to start?  There are so many things wrong with the way our culture views beauty, and so many influences and ideals bombarding us every day that it's hard to know where to begin.  But I would like to consider for a moment why I am constantly left with the unshakable feeling that I am not okay the way I am.  I try to limit the amount of "secular beauty" I see. I don't read fashion magazines any more, I don't follow celebrity gossip, but all it takes is watching one re-run of Friends to spawn a litany of insults in me head as I contemplate how ugly and inadequate I am. Because no matter how hard I work out, or how little I eat I will never have Jennifer Aniston's ass..ets. 

It struck me recently while having dinner with a group of women that our minds are so disordered we have become completely incapable of seeing ourselves the way we really are, but we can appreciate and even exaggerate beauty in others without a second thought.  These women are some of the most beautiful women I know and I often imagine what I would look like if I had the time and resources they have to commit to my personal appearance: gym memberships, trainers, nutritionists, childcare.  But even they are left feeling like they have to explain why they are "letting" themselves eat a tortilla chip. We are so imprisoned to this idea of beauty that we can't even eat any more without feeling guilty (consider how often Christ draws our attention to the importance of eating, feasting and fellowship. It is meant to be a gift). And then there's all the unhealthy and obsessive comparison that echoes through the chamber of our minds while in the presence of other women: "her waist is so much smaller than mine," "how does she make her arms look so fit?" "I wish my legs looked like that," "I never look like that 3 months after I have a baby," "I nurse my baby too, but I stay fat to do it"  And then I think about how unfair it is that so and so has had just as many kids as me and yet she weighs 20 pounds less, or I work out five days a week and count my calories but skinny minny over there eats whatever she wants and says she never exercises.  Oh, the cruel injustice, the pure suffering! My. Life. Is. So. Hard.  

Or am I just creating this suffering for myself? Is this a cross I just keep fashioning and schlepping around, praying that God will take it from me but resolved that the only "right" answer to that prayer is to make me look like Jennifer Aniston?  Of course at this stage in my life I don't care about looking like a celebrity (any more), but I battle to get the looming image of my 22 year-old self out of my head.  

I think we have to ask ourselves two questions:

Who set this ridiculous standard? and Who am I disappointing if I don't live up to it? 

And the answer to both, is ME. 

My husband thinks I am beautiful.  I know he genuinely, wholeheartedly thinks that I am gorgeous, and breathtaking, sexy, and strong and perfect just the way I am.  He loves me with my stretch marks and my loose skin, when I am my thinnest and my heaviest. He sees ME, just me. 

My kids think I am beautiful. They love my soft skin and my long hair.  I hate my huge, ridiculous milk-laden breasts, but they give my children life and sustenance and it has never occurred to them to think they make me look fat.  They notice when I dress up and when I put lip gloss on before their daddy comes home and they think I am beautiful.  

So why on earth have I convinced myself that I am less then because I do not weigh what I did 15 years ago?  And why the heck do I think I should look the way I did when I had no children, a flexible schedule, a gym membership and a 20 year-old's metabolism? Why do I waste so much energy thinking about my next strategy to lose those last 10 pounds?---and who are we kidding if I lose 10 I will just set a goal for 10 more.  My husband and my children are my whole life; I would gladly, freely, without hesitation, die for any one of them and yet I let some stranger on a tabloid, flaunting her post-baby-body make me feel badly about my tummy that leaves people always asking "is she pregnant again?"  

We are at war.  The devil is a nasty, evil bastard out to rob us of all that is good and true and holy. I teach my children to put on the armor of God, to guard themselves against the snares of the enemy, to call on St Michael and all the angels to protect them in battle, and yet every single day, I give him ground in this area of my life.  I believe the lie that I am ugly, or fat, or not good enough because I haven't gotten down to some arbitrary number on a stupid scale.  Do I spend nearly as much time praying? No. Helping others? No. Cultivating virtue in my children? Probably not.  If I am not actively trying to lose weight I am creating an action plan for how I will start losing soon.  And I spend an absurd amount of time imagining how much happier I will be when I finally get to that magic number.   I recently came across some old photos of myself in a stack of forgotten memories and of course the first thing I did was bemoan that I had aged, and then began wishing I just weighed that again.  Just as quickly I remembered the moment when that picture was taken and recalled that I thought I was fat then, or I didn't want my picture taken because I still had 5 lbs to lose. Absurd!  What a waste of time and energy and what a shame that I am constantly telling God (not to mention my poor husband) that I am not good enough. 

Now I am not saying weight doesn't matter at all.  We need to be good stewards of our bodies, we need to take care of the temple of the Holy Spirit that God gave us.  We need to be prudent, and responsible. But we also need to be content when we do all those things and are still a size 10, or 12, or 22.  This is clearly where our culture doesn't help AT ALL.  Babies and pregnancy are only celebrated if you barely gain while your pregnant and look like you never had a baby when it's all over. You can make a lot of money as a celebrity if you were once fat but aren't any more. Occasionally Hollywood will give an Oscar, or an Emmy to a "full-figured" woman touting the mantra that women are beautiful at any size, but give them 6 months and Jenny Craig or Weight Watchers will get a hold of them and they'll get 10 times the work and attention because now they are really beautiful.  Again, it is so disordered. Why don't we praise women for the tell-tale pooch that tells the world you have given life to an eternal soul? Why don't we pity the perfect bodied 40 year old who only looks that way because she has never known the joy of motherhood?  Why does no one envy the breasts of a woman who has let them be stretched and pulled and changed with the life-giving grasp of a babies perfect mouth?  We have allowed the Prince of Lies to dictate the standard of Beauty.  We have been so indoctrinated and inundated with this lie that we cannot even see the truth as the truth any more.  

Eve was created as the zenith of creation. She was God's final, beautiful artistic gesture to say now it is finished; now it is very good.  Woman, in any shape and size, is God's most beautiful creation; his masterpiece, so of course the devil is out to destroy it.  Not only are we God's masterpiece but we are the link to the expansion and creation of the kingdom of God on earth.  He entrusted our bodies,  the ones we so often loathe, to the creation of mankind. He entrusted a woman's body to the human creation of his only son. 

But why else would the enemy target us so persistently?  Think how distracted we are by this issue. Think about all the wasted energy, the fear, the sheer amount of time we spend trying to live up to a fabricated standard of beauty. Would we pray more? serve more? Spend more time making beautiful meals, surrounded by community and family, sitting around a crowded table with happy faces and full tummies  without worrying about the number of calories that in each serving? And what about the effect it has on our relationships? We can't accept compliments from our girlfriends and even more damaging we don't believe our husbands when they say they love us the way we are.  It creates distance and tension in relationships that would otherwise be edified by accepting the truth.   For me, it taints the gift of children because I dread so much the inevitable gaining of weight and the increasingly arduous effort it takes to lose that weight, and we have a culture full of women who will admit they are hesitant to have children because of what it will do to their bodies.  We have no perspective of the eternal, our hearts are restless and confused.  

Sadly, I can say all these things, and even believe them but that does not win the war that plays out in my head every day. I know not every woman struggles to the same degree, and I marvel at women who seem to accept themselves the way they are, but sadly they are few and far between, and often when I think I have met someone who doesn't struggle with this issue, after getting to know her I discover that she falls prey just like the rest of us.  

So what can we do?  I think a good start is to speak the truth, to guard our hearts and minds and to pray like crazy that God changes the way we see ourselves, that he redefines what we think to be beautiful, and that he gives us the tools, the wisdom, and the words to hand down to our sons and daughters so that the vicious cycle of lies can be broken.  I pray every day that God will guard my daughters (and my sons) from the poor example I set with my constant disquietude concerning my body and that before I form their habits and minds he will order my mind and soul to strive for true beauty, the kind that quiets a spirit, gives life with generosity, shelters and protects, and provides a haven for true gifts and talents to be discovered, to be a reflection of God's indelible beauty, a true masterpiece.