Mothers, Invisible Chords and "Snow Day"

Well, I didn't get back to the blog in a day as I had hoped but I did get back here and that is saying something these days. We've got a lot going on around here including some extra projects at work (me), bronchitis acquired from small children that seems to have taken up permanent residence in a certain person's lungs (Davis) and Valentine's Day at preschool tomorrow for Junia. She'll be decked out in pink and armed with valentines that you can plant in the ground and watch grow. (Thank you, Target, for an educational, eco-friendly non-Miley Cyrus Valentine's Day offering this year). We are also gearing up for an event with our inter-church orphan advocacy organization that we started after Orphan Sunday last year. We will be hosting a "We Heart Orphans" Family Day at a popular local outdoor venue that will bring together individuals and families in our community who are passionate about God's heart for orphans. We are really excited about how God is building a committed community in our region around the issue of orphan care.

A few things have happened lately that have felt very Mom-ish and have caused me to think a lot about being a mom, especially as I come up on my one year anniversary of life in Mamaland. Last night, I went to an informational meeting at Junia's preschool about Kindergarten readiness. Even though she won't start Kindergarten for another year and a half, as a chronic nerd, I was eating it all up, asking too many dorky questions and taking copious notes. I have no plans to become one of these parents (check out the article if you have not yet heard the buzz about The Myth of the Gifted Child) but I do feel as if I am to be a good steward of the precious minds God has entrusted to us and I want to do all I can toward that end. I was pleased to learn that we haven't screwed up our girls too much yet. I think so often about how smart they are and how they would probably be so much smarter with a different mom. You know one of those I-am-totally-fulfilled-as-a-human-being-because-I-am-a-mom women with the graceful perma-grin who never snaps at her kids as she creates their personalized life lesson plans and grows her own food. She also isn't bothered by how her kids trash her car with crumbs and other disgusting things and she wouldn't even consider leaving her kids in the germ-infested childcare at the gym so she can eek out 45 minutes on a treadmill. Her kids also have no idea who Elmo and Barney are. As you may have guessed, I am not that mother and hopefully that isn't too much of bummer for my kids.

What I have found over my almost-year of Mom-ing, it that you feel inadequate a fair bit of the time and that inadequacy is compounded when you compare yourself with other mothers. Some moms are very open in sharing and laughing about their areas of incompetence while others seem to have so much of their identity wrapped up in the title and role of "Mom" that they need to tell you how good they are at what they do and how extraordinary their kids are. I relate very well to first group of moms and want to run and hide from the second group. As a new mom, I've not found myself to be a huge fan of what I would call "Mom books", even though I have been given many by many thoughtful gift-givers. Most just don't speak to my unique life story as a woman and mother and I find most of them to be incredibly cheezy. However, I did find a nugget in one of the more badly-titled ones that really resonated with me. I am a self-acknowledged perfectionist who is also very self-reflective. Hence, I am always trying to improve in the pursuit of excellence. This makes being a mother of small children challenging for many, many reasons. Not the least of which is wanting to be a really good mom while also being very aware of the many ways I fall short of this goal. I know what I'm good at as a mom (some stuff) and I know what I'm not good at (more stuff here). For example, I can confidently say that I excel in dressing my children. I really do. They look pretty amazing just about any old time thanks to my handiwork. Now, can they read already at 2 and 3? No. Do I have grand plans for home schooling? Not a chance. Do I ooze nurturing? Rarely. But they do look fabulous. I'm also really good with the logistics of being a mom (hence the valentines that were purchased a month ago and great clothes bought on sale now to be worn next year). Beyond that, I can't say I feel like a Shining Star Mom every day when I wake up. Bottom line is that I compare myself with other moms as I try to gauge my own efficacy as a mom. In the book I mentioned, the author suggests that when we compare ourselves with one another as mothers we either come up short or become prideful, both of which are self-destructive. She writes: "Once I stopped comparing myself to my friends and accepted them for who they were - their strengths and weaknesses - I began to relax in my parenting...Separately, my friends and I were far from perfect. But when we used our strengths to help each other, our [collective] parenting came a little closer to perfection...God never intended us to parent in isolation. It saddens Him when we do. And it saddens Him when we push another person up on the "perfect parent" pedestal just because they are gifted in an area where we are not...Slapping the "perfect parent" label on anyone is injustice to you and to the person you label." I really appreciate the author's wisdom here and I hope to someday feel at home in my own skin as a mom with my own unique story. I also hope that by keeping myself connected with the other amazing moms I am blessed to know who love me and love my kids, I too will become a little more amazing as we raise our kids together.

In addition to thinking about my own experience as a mom, I've been thinking about birthmothers. I recently spoke at an adoption event and shared our story as well as some broader thoughts on God's heart for orphan care and adoption. The evening included a variety of speakers including a birth mother (a woman who had given up a child for adoption at 19; she's now in her 30's with 4 kids) and woman who was adopted as an infant and later went on to meet her birth mother at 29 (she's in her 40's now). What I found striking in both of the stories these women shared was the ways in which they described what almost seems like an invisible line that forever connects birth children to their birth parents, regardless of if this connection is desired or not by either party. The birth mother who spoke talked about years of feeling like something was missing in her life, only to realize later that what was missing was the child she gave up. She also shared about a serious medical condition that ran in the birth father's family and was later discovered in the biological daughter she had given up for adoption. The woman who shared from the perspective of an adoptive child talked about meeting her birth mother and noting some obvious physical and personality traits she shared with her birth mother, who was, upon their first meeting, at total stranger to her. One of the most obvious things she noticed happened when her birth mother got up to go to the restroom at the restaurant where they first met. As she walked away from the table, her daughter couldn't help but see that they had the exact same distinctive rear end.

As I listened to all of this, I couldn't help but feel sad as I reflected on my own daughters' experience. When teachers comment about how bright the girls are, I often think to myself "Was she smart?" When Junia gets hysterical and laughs so loud that its scrunches up her little nose, I wonder "Did she do that? Did she love to laugh like that?" When I watch Eden run, and she is SO FAST, I wonder "Was she an amazing athlete like that?" Thankfully, we have been blessed with a great deal of family history about our girls - more than many adoptive families - but what we have will never be complete and I grieve that. What I grieve even more is that I know my girls will someday ask these same questions as they try to trace back that invisible line to the woman who gave them life. I don't want their sweet hearts to hurt as they try to make sense of who they are without that biological anchor, but I am naive to think there won't be pain later on in life that results from the fact that I, and not another, am their mother. I pray that God will give them wholeness someday in knowing that they were dearly loved by the women in their lives to whom they are tied by invisible chords - chords that are forever tied to the body and chords that are fiercely anchored to the heart.


Just to rub it in: Here is what "snow day" looks like at Junia's preschool. The "snow" had to be trucked in from a local ice rink and most of the kids didn't have anything close to "snow gear", so they went sledding in stretch pants, some without mittens. My kind of winter...