Susan is Out Of Control  

Susan, when faced with the prospect of gearing up to be an "inspiration and a mentor" to her young family, looked at the pile of creative materials she was gathering and balked. "I['m] try[ing] to make our home inspiring but...right now I am so overwhelmed with childcare, work and housekeeping I'm not finding the idea of ... anything... exciting!" (I'm) not feeling inspiring...just out of control."


The Missing Crucial Step

There are many of us who can relate to Susan. For all our good intentions, we often miss a step - a huge step - and it lands us flat on our faces and sprawled out on the sidewalk of discontent.The step we tend to miss is that as we consider the needs of our family we forget to consider our own needs. We often don't consider that it takes some serious down time just to be sure that what we're planning is really realistic in this particular season in our lives.

"But my Mom did it all!"

Susan has two very young children. She is very organized and keeps a very clean and inviting home. She laments, however, that she didn't feel like a very good mother. She felt she certainly wasn't the wonderful mom her mother had been. Her mom, she said, would make all sorts of cool crafts with her children and still manage to keep the house picked up. She wanted to show her children her creative side but she just didn't have the energy to take care of the children, clean the house and do crafts too! 

Misleading Memories
I encouraged her to talk to her mom to see how she had 'done it all'. What she found out floored her.  While her mom did do a lot of crafts for, and with, her children, she didn't do them until a much later stage in her life. She wasn't trying to build piñatas and decoupage Christmas ornaments when her kids were nursing and toddling and learning to walk and talk. All that stuff came later, at a different season in her life.

Our vision  of success
Sometimes we as mothers subtly do the same thing. Over time, we develop a vision of what a successful  family looks like, and then measure all our efforts against that vision without regard for what our family's unique talents and needs are and what we were realistically capable of accomplishing given our current season of life. When we can't make this vision a reality, we often feel a looming sense that we are somehow failing our children. We can become grouchy and it shows.


A Wake-Up Call

I had a huge wake-up call along these same lines not very long ago. One day, my 10 year-old daughter asked, "Mom, do you really enjoy being a mom? " As I quickly and adamantly blurted out "Of course I do," I realized from the look on her face, that if I was enjoying being a mother, I wasn't acting like it.

As she walked away, I no longer saw my daughter as a child but as a young woman who was getting her vibes from me about how much value she should place on her possible future role as mother. Based on my murmurings earlier in the day, I was sure she was thinking that just about any other occupation was sure to be more rewarding and enjoyable. But why, and how, did this happen? Didn't we have order? Weren't we a home of learning and love? Aren't my children well-mannered? Why was I so dang grouchy?

That exchange between my daughter and myself pulled me up short and had me thinking seriously about what kind of example or mentor I was being and the changes I needed to make. 

Why was I so dang grouchy!?

Why was I grouchy? I was grouchy because I kept measuring myself against some amazing composite that personified all the great parenting philosophies I had ever highlighted in a book or heard at a conference or read on an e-list. I was grouchy because I was no where near being that person and so I felt, yep, you guess it…like a failure.

I realized I had to get to work on defining clearly for myself what being a good mother and mentor meant at this particular stage in my life. Not 5 years from now when my children are all reading, not 3 years ago when they were mostly in diapers, not when my husband's commute is shorter, not when I get the big closet cleaned out, but right now at the ages my children are now. At the age I am now, at the weight I am now, at the job my husband has now, with the work load I have right now, in the home we have now. With the interests my children have right now and the laundry loads I have right now and the resources available right now. What did it mean to be a successful mother and mentor in this season in my life?


There is no such thing as a small change

I now realize that being informed about how other people do things is amazingly helpful, but in the end, the information is simply a set of options that I am then free to apply or not apply to my own situation. I am finding that just making one change, and then letting it settle into our family life, perhaps for three or four weeks, before making another change, works really well for me at this time. Making Massive change or picking up a whole bunch of new things at once has spelled disaster and burn out for me. I could do it in college, but now, I personally can't hack it. Other women may be able to. That's great, they are in a different season than me. Fantastic.

I also learned to forgive myself for anything I felt I was not doing 'well enough'. I am choosing instead to give myself credit for the things I am doing well, and if not well, then I give myself credit for just getting it done without being grouchy about it. I believe we need to be gentle and kind to ourselves especially when we are growing, and as a family we are growing into new areas all the time so we need to be gentle with ourselves all the time.

Mistakes have new meaning (in a really good way) 
When making a mistake makes me fearful, and I am tempted to grab onto to someone else's model for success, I try to  remember that a mistake simply means I must be trying something new and that I'm growing, and that's what I'm supposed to be doing. This notion makes me feel better and far less grouchy.

The Change in Me... 
Being a mom and mentor to my children has come to mean showing them I'm enjoying my life and the life I share with them. In the past, when I looked for things in the community to do, I used to look for the things I thought the children would enjoy. Now I look for the things that I want to experience. This has led us to balloon launchings at dawn and farmer's markets on Saturday mornings, trips to observatories, watching space shuttles lift off, and documentaries about robots on Mars. As they see me enjoying my life and seeking out and learning about the things that interest me I know that that is the example they will take away with them. This to me is being truly inspirational.