This is a word week that I needed help on. I appreciated Guest Post: Is Mothering a Dirty Word?because, like her, I have always been ambivalent about mothering. My ambivalence was a mystery to me…how could I love people so much and not love children just the same?

As I reflect upon that, I realize that the intimacy and weight of being a child’s mother felt smothering. Sometimes it still does.

I stopped babysitting when I was thirteen (I was gangbusters before then, but I burned out bright and fast). I set my sights on other things, like ruling the world. But like most dreams, the reality of adulthood wasn’t exactly what I pictured. Post-college, I found the most life in youth ministry, being goofy one second and serious the next, building relationships one ice cream run, breakfast date, and bible study at a time. My favorite memories were driving girls home and sitting in the car talking in the dark.

I left feeling emptied, but in the most satisfying of ways. Like I had poured my life into something that mattered. Youth ministry softened my heart toward mothering, but some kind of warning system deep in my soul kept blinking bright over what I was embracing. When I succumbed to the fact that I didn’t want to be a forty-year old mother of toddlers, I found myself quickly pregnant. I breathed a sigh of relief when it was a boy. I was convinced God would give me all boys so I could keep being a cool youth leader for girls without ever having to deal with trying to mother one. And like most dreams, this was not reality either. My second was a girl, born twenty-two months after the first, and I fell in love with pink all over again.

Both my dreams and my fears about adulthood have strangely come true. My dreams of doing big things haven’t faded, and a mix of intensity, tenacity and God’s hand have opened some doors. I left youth ministry but kept working with teenagers in counseling, and I continued to be emptied, and filled, emptied and filled, but this time, on empty, I came home at night to teething babies and cranky toddlers and dirty bathrooms.  

Mothering introduced a new definition for empty. This emptiness is much deeper, as if there are reserves that I didn’t know about, probably somewhere down next to that red blinking light, the warning system set in place to avoid completely losing myself. But it has to be done, as a mother. As a mother I forsake sleep and privacy and dignity. I forsake dreams and plans. I often forsake showers and highlights and pedicures, things that take precious time. I marvel at how many hours I spend with little people every day. I marvel that every woman is type-A to work this job, after all, it’s all day, into the night, and sometimes through the night. Who works 100+ hours/week and doesn’t seem fried?

Of course, I look around and sense that some women don’t feel this way about mothering. It’s not a job, it’s a calling, they might say. And while I most certainly agree that mothering is far more than a job, my little warning system tells me I act like it is. I punch the clock at seven AM, just as I’ve immersed myself into my writing or work or coffee. If I’m needed before that, I’m resentful. I punch out at 8:30PM. If I’m needed after that, I’m angry. Like a factory worker who follows protocol until that whistle blows, I punch the clock. I put in my good hours, and I want time to myself. For the other stuff I do. The stuff that I think “fills” me up.

So I punch the clock. I’d like to believe the women who tell me, as they always do, “this time goes by so fast! You’ll miss it when it’s gone!” and now that my youngest is three, I get brief and intermittent flashes of that truth. When someone loses a tooth. When someone rides a two-wheeler. When I see that the chubby-cheeked, round-belly toddler is beginning to grow.

But most of the time, it’s punching the clock.

The past week I’ve said no to most things. I’ve stayed home. I’ve tried not to be a work-at-home mom, which is like trying to do quality control on the factory line while also running the forklift. It’s dangerous to my soul, to let all those boundaries dissolve. Some women do it beautifully, and sometimes I do too. But for now, I’ll write in the early mornings and late at night, and spend the rest of the day (mostly) being a mom. And I think there will be rest in that, less clock-punching and more calling. 

We all do our best to make mothering work. For some it feels just right, like the emptying and filling I feel in youth ministry. For others, like me, young children might feel more smothering than satisfying. But we do what we can. We make it work. We find out what feels right. We correct course, continue on, check course, correct again.

And we pray for those wonderful flashes of moments where we know that mothering matters. Faithfulness to the job matters. Loyalty, forgiveness, laughter, love, the joy and the pain of it all…it matters. It’s a messy complicated love, neither total dream nor bleak reality. It’s the best picture of life there is. And I hope that when my children are grown, I will look back and find satisfaction in the struggle. That I will be changed for the better, and that they will have survived living with this mess of a mom.