When It Feels Hard and Heavy, Keep Going

I argued with my toddler for ten minutes over why she can't play with mama's only nice pair of glasses. It was a violent mess of toddler writhing and alligator tears. The word "no" was muttered from my lips a hundred times in between her reaching tiny hands out for the one thing on the table that she couldn't have. I tried distraction. I tried re-direct. There is no reasoning with her or me in these moments and I know that we are destined for tantrums far worse than that minor occurrence. We're cut from the same mold and we don't back down from something we feel deep. She evidently felt deeply about my glasses for a solid ten minutes today.

At this moment I can hear her war cries echoing down the hall followed by her sleepy grunting which is always a sure sign that she is overdue for a nap. I'm reasonably certain I'm over due for a nap. These are the days that aren't even fathomable when you are waiting with maternal glow (or is that just indigestion?) for a bundle of baby to arrive.  The days fourteen months postpartum that you wake up and manage to get dressed and look pretty darn good for a busy mama only to find that by the end of the day your hair has deflated, your makeup is all but gone and that black is not the color to wear around a drooling, snot-nosed wee one.

It's no secret around here that my daughter fought sleep like Muhammad Ali. We've turned a corner in that department and I am sleeping (and she is obviously) a hundred times more than a year ago. I'm grateful for the sleep. Grateful that I'm feeling more like myself and less like the walking dead. I never guessed that I would have a sleepless babe. My husband and I are fans of sleep- surely our kid would be too? Right?! Wrong. It would be easy to shake my heads at new mamas and say, "Well, my girl never slept." with a roll of the eyes and crossed arms when they tell me about how their twelve week old is sleeping all through the night. It would be a slippery slope for me to careen down thinking that I had done something wrong or not done something right to cause our sleep issue. Which isn't the case, but the enemy knows our mama Achilles heels. All of that would be easier than lifting my eyes and heart to the heavens to say, "Jesus, what were all those up all nights about?" Jesus always says the same thing,  

"It was about grace. It was about Me showing you that I am great and my grace is big"

It is all about Jesus and His abundant grace. All about God's grace in our lives that loves us as we are but wants us as we were meant to be, like Christ.

I see the sleep struggle as a grace in my life. I needed to be rattled from my selfishness. Tramping down the hallway ten times a night and sleeping on five inches of bed while the little one took up a full half of our queen size mattress left me exhausted and leaning on God in new and deeply soul changing ways. There was the period from 5-7 months when I slept most nights on the floor of her room from sheer exhaustion and some days I just didn't know if I would survive till her next nap. I would share tummy time with her trying not to doze off. I'd glory in the accomplishment of making it out of my pjs by noon. The small victories in what seemed like days of defeat. A bleak picture painted for all my third trimester mamas to read. Don't worry, I'm getting to the really good part. The part where I tell you about what Jesus has done. That is always the best part.

I love motherhood. I love it in a way that I didn't think that I possibly could. My daughter is vibrant and adventurous and a love bug full of hugs and slobbery kisses. I love all the things about motherhood that you expect to love when you are rubbing a full-of-baby belly. But the sleepless nights and the other (and there are many other things than sleep) unexpected stretching of motherhood can leave more than stretch marks across your hips.

I'm wearing the new skin of motherhood and I'm becoming more and more comfortable in this new skin. The way it has made me a new woman. The way God has meant it for good in my life in the midst of hard and even because of the hard. Mamas who are walking the hard you will find yourself on the other side of the current battles soon. They will be memories that fade like labor pains. I know it is hard. I hear you. God sees you. Push through the hurt and hard to life in Christ.

The giving and giving and getting so little back can weary a body and a heart. The smell of a sweet baby head is payment enough in the moment, but even that can wear thin when you just want to go back to bed and go back to being yourself. When it feels hard and heavy keep going.The heaviness of motherhood that you feel is meant to be heavy. It is meant to be way more of a load than you can bare. We are the Gospel light to little ones born into darkness and that dark can feel heavy on us mamas, the light wielding warriors. This calling is sacred and it can leave us astounded at the way God entrusts life to our weak hands. He shores us up. He hems us in on every side. He redeems the days lost to sleeplessness and He makes us the mamas we cannot be.

Even so the sacredness of the calling can vanish in a blink when extinguished by the fire of anger and sheer rage at a toddler's persistence or a tiny's sassy attitude. I need Christ's gentleness to bear fruit in my life. I need His patience with me and my stubborn insistence on my way to be the patience I cling to when I want to stick her in her crib and walk our the door. I need the Fruits of the Spirit to bare sweet fruit in the sour moments of my life. It is the hard days of motherhood that have showed me my need (and will continue to show me) for real Gospel change in my own life.

Are you struggling today as a mama? Do you feel like all this hard is just too much? It is. I know it is. Lean on Jesus, call another mama and cry your heart out, or email me for support at handmedowngrace(at)gmail(dot)com and tell me the ugly details and we'll pray for God's grace to be poured out generously, ok?