Mama's Turn

As of lately, I feel like my life can be summed up in one thought:

Some days I feel like the best of mothers. Other days I feel like the greatest failures.

These past few months have been pretty hard on me. When people ask how I'm doing, I usually want to say "Do you REALLY want to know? Or do you just want me to say, 'I'm fine.'" just so you don't have to listen to me. ha So here's how I'm really doing.

Motherhood has thrown me for a loop. It's a hard job. If someone tried to explain this to me when I was working, I honestly probably would have laughed in their face, and now the jokes on me... It's so much more than just taking care of your children and your household chores. There's this underlying emotional struggle that I have to face every day. Maybe it's the hormones, sleep deprivation, or just me being a crazy person. There are so many times when I think about how I feel like I'm not impacting the world like I use to. Or, as I stated before, I just feel like a failure. Then I think about how I miss my old life sometimes, mostly my friends. My friends are just spread out all around the world, it makes me sad to not be in their lives all the time like I use to. I suppose I'm just trying to find my place as Mama and how to be the best version of this new person that I can.

Then there's the being completely exhausted from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep... oh and being a total "Mombie" throughout the whole night and not even being able to remember just how many times I got up to feed or stop Jordyn from crying or from putting Sara back into her big girl bed because she has fallen out haha. I thought Sara was a bad sleeper as a baby... HA I'm so tired I literally just forgot what I was going to write next. This morning I almost got into the car with no shoes... Lord help me!

I don't even really know where to go from here... I guess I've just hit a wall of... I don't know what I would call it. Sadness? It's been a huge change. Being a stay at home mom means this is a 24/7 job. I don't get to go escape to another job for 7 hours and come back to my kids. It's the same meals... the same arguments and problems... the same games and tv shows... the same playgrounds... the same tantrums... the same ways to make them laugh... the same errands... It's just something I've had to get use to. We were watching Inside Out and it made me cry with all the sadness. But one thing I took away from it is that sadness is okay and it's a part of life. Then it made me think of something I learned about God, that He cries with us and holds our sadness with Him. I don't have to be happy all the time! BUT I also can't dig myself into this sadness black hole that I have seemed to create for myself. That's just it, being at home it seems that I have more time to dwell on these little things and it makes these feeling worse!

Then there's the military life which has really been adding to my sadness. It's one thing for me to lose my friends to this life (as in... move away), but it's so sad to see Sara lose all her best buddies. She didn't sign up for this life and it breaks my heart to have to tell her that her friend isn't coming back to play with her. Then it makes me think of Inside Out again and the change that little girl went through because of her family's move. We're going to have to do that to our girls and I just hope and pray that they will be able to bounce back from it and pick up the pieces wherever we land. It's hard for me to make new friends in places, and I don't want my girls to have that issue.

I've been doing this bible study on the days where I can scrounge up the motivation to do it. It asks "Where do you most often turn to find joy or refreshment? As mothers, we need the revival, wisdom, and refreshment of God's Word." It brings me joy being in God's Word. It makes me remember that I am His and despite my emotional state of being, He is there for me and loves me even when I fail. That, yeah, I'm staying at home and not touching the lives of a classroom of kids, but I am touching the lives of two precious little girls. It's also the small things that bring me joy. Sara's random hugs and hearing her say "thank you Mama" at just the right time, Jordyn's giggles, watching the two of them play with each other. I get to be here for all of that. The biggest thing I've really learn from my studies is that I need to take care of me to be a good Mama. And taking care of Me, means making sure I'm finding joy and refreshment in Jesus. If I want to teach them to be compassionate and loving, then I have to practice that myself.