On Acceptance

Shifts in family life don't have to be a struggle

I am sitting outside, beyond the kitchen sliding door, on a tired and well stained cushion with one arm over my head and the other on a partially puppy chewed armrest. The sun is high and warm, glowing red underneath my closed lids. I inhale. It’s “rest time” inside. Originally implemented to ensure naps for toddlers, it’s now a means for me to catch my own breath. I exhale.

I’m struggling with the shift in my family. Five of my children are young adults now and busy with their own lives, interests, schooling, and work. Four of my children are young enough to need my complete attention, and two of those have special needs. I try to think of what it was like when I was mothering four small children, without helpers, so long ago; I’m sure I was just as tired. Tired, but like twenty years younger. Now I’m just tired. And a grandmother, while still raising my own five year old. I open my eyes to the caws and shadows made by black crows as they fly over.

“I don’t know how you do it.” This. This is what I hear, over and over and over again. I don’t know how I do it, either. I just do it, one day at a time. Sometimes, one hour at a time. Sometimes, one breath at a time. I do it the same way any mother who loves her children would do it: by caring enough to just do it. By asking for help when I need it and battling against the temptation to bitterness when it doesn’t show up in the way I think it ought to. By spending time in my morning and evening practices to care for my own needs. But exactly how the day—or the years—will progress is a mystery and I don’t pretend to know some magic mothering formula that will make children potty train faster or stop climbing cabinets. Right now, I can’t even imagine a life without diapers in the house, much less having a conversation with either of my two nonverbal children.

I hear the oven timer ding and peel myself up. I consider as I pick up the pot holders: the difference now, I think, in my mothering, this great shift, is not so much the lack of help or even that I’m older. I’m not even sure exactly what it is, or, quite frankly, that I even need to know. In fact, all I really need to know at this moment is that the grapefruit-walnut cinnamon rolls are fully baked, so at this moment, I’m taking them out and letting them cool. And then I will frost them. And then I will have one. With coffee. Like I said, one moment, one coffee, one afternoon at a time. Maybe that’s how I’m “doing” it.

My moppy brown haired little boy bounces into the kitchen sing-song-like, “Is it time to wake up yet?” I give him the same wry answer I gave all of my little boys and girls during the yesteryears, “You’d have to first be napping in order to wake up. And, yes.”

Later, I find myself back outside in the sunshine, savoring my treat. I notice apples are falling from the trees in earnest now, and the blueberry bush leaves are turning a firey red. Nothing in nature struggles against the autumn. It just is.

I take a deep breath in. The shift in my family is beautiful, and if I can embrace a wholehearted acceptance of that (exhale), I might not be so tired from the struggle because that struggle will cease to exist in the light of welcoming those very changes the Lord in His wisdom brings to pass.

“The book is full of practical suggestions to help mothers effectively manage their household while performing their greater activity of nurturing and raising their children...all while preserving their own sanity and yes, even adding beauty and meaning to their own lives during the process.”

Amazon review