An article I read today, written almost 35 years ago really resonated with me. Isn’t it amazing how the Lord works? This woman who wrote this article touched someone who wasn’t even born when she wrote it. Me.
I have been feeling a lot of feelings lately that I have felt guilty for feeling. Things like, “I can’t wait until my kids are older” and “I have no time to myself” and, “What have I gotten myself into?” I recently had my third child, and life seems chaotic, and overwhelming right now. Adjusting to a new life in the house, and a cranky little life at that, has been hard for me. In some ways, I’ve wanted to rebel against all that I have instead of embracing it, and I have felt a lot of guilt for that. But, somehow, I ran across the article: When You Feel Inadequate as a Mother written almost 35 years ago. It described my feelings perfectly in so many ways.
One quote from the article that really resonated was this one:
“We all seem to measure ourselves by what we see in others, and that’s others at their best, scrubbed and polished physically and emotionally. Yet we judge ourselves by how we feel when we’re at our worst. Consequently, we’re sure to come out on the short end of the stick, always inadequate.”
YES!! Why have I never thought of it this way before? When I see a Mom with 10 kids and they seem to have it all together, maybe I’m just catching her on her best day. And, usually negative thoughts creep in on our worst day. So, comparison does nothing but makes us feel like we are less than we should be. Inadequate.
She also talks about how motherhood has stages just like life. Infancy. Childhood. Adolescence. and Maturity. I am definitely in the adolescent stage, unfortunately.
Before I had kids, and was working full-time, I remember telling my husband that if I could just be a stay at home Mom, I knew I would always have a clean house and dinner made when he got home. Talk about naive!! I was definitely in the infancy stage at that point.
Then, I had my first. I soaked up everything I could read on the subject of motherhood and tried so hard to figure it all out perfectly. I was like a child.
Now, I have three kids. I feel overwhelmed, and frustrated. I often think life with three kids is too much to handle. I have been known to throw teenager-like temper tantrums. The adolescent stage of motherhood can be ugly. But, there is hope. One day, I hope to be a mature mother.
She speaks of relying on the scriptures as a “mature mother” in order to give us perspective. She shares that reading in the scriptures that there was meant to be opposition in ALL things meant motherhood too. I think having that perspective and knowledge is vital to our happiness as mothers. We must take the good with the bad, and know that even in motherhood, we have to have opposition. And anyone with a three year old knows about opposition!
I wish I had read this article as a Mom in the infancy stage. Maybe I could have skipped over adolescence in motherhood altogether? But, regardless, I’m grateful to have read it now. And I hope that reading that article can help another Mom run through those stages a little faster. Because we all want that end prize don’t we? To be the Mom that really DOES have it all together. Or maybe just mature enough to know that maybe that’s not entirely possible.
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