My Current Thoughts on Motherhood

I woke up this morning thinking about Mother's Day, no specifics, just an awareness. I got on Facebook and post after post after post of people telling their mothers how wonderful they are and how they learned everything they know from their wonderful mothers.

I love my mother and sometimes I miss her dreadfully. When I miss her, it is always with the disclaimer: *but not the person she was when she died, but who she was when I was young*. My mother died of mental illness. Reader's Digest asked people to submit a 6 word tribute to their mother. Mine?

Good intentions. Mental illness. Mercy. Missed.

She did the best she could. There is grace for the rest.

It took me a few minutes of reflection to be able to put my mother to rest again. I remembered something a faithful friend said to me a few years ago. He listened to my mother-fears and pointed out that my children have a very different childhood than my own. This is so beautifully true. The poverty, mental illnesses, divorce, anger, etc are far removed from my children. I, on the other hand, am still close enough to smell it and hear it. This leads to my fear.

I sat on the side of my bed this morning and thought of my kids still sleeping soundly in their beds. I thought about their lives and their growing knowledge of the Cross. They see sin and sorrow, death and pain, but they have a different filter than I did.

When I entered high school, it had become childish and a "waste of my potential" to want to be a wife and mother. In 11th grade, my school offered a job fair and we had to declare "what we wanted to be when we grew up". Motherhood and marriage wasn't on the list. I had to choose something else. I chose physical therapy or teaching, but deep in my heart, I just wanted to be a homemaker. I kept it quiet though, on the down low. I'm a people pleaser.

I have a friend I knew when I was in high school. She knew everything about me. Recently, after a divorce and a death, we stood in the cemetery and cried together. She had many regrets. As we stood weeping together, she looked at me and said, "Please tell me you don't take your life for granted. You have everything you ever wanted. That is so rare, Crissy. Be thankful and don't take it for granted. Promise me." I promised.

This morning, I stood in my hallway and listened to my kids' silence and kept that promise. Mother's Day is not about celebrating my mother but forgiving her and knowing that she tried. Mother's Day is remembering to savor the fact that I have everything I ever wanted and more. I should get my husband and children gifts on this day, not the other way around.




I asked my kids to complete the six word tribute. Here are their results.

Wise. Loving. Strong. Excited. Funny. Ridiculous.

She's a loving but annoying mother. (haha Ty.)

Loving. Sarcastic. Smart. Pretty. Crazy. Creative.

There aren't words to describe her.

She's got a really great personality. (yes, Maggie was being funny)


Then I asked them, "What is the one sentence that I say the most?"

I love you.

Be quiet! Your dad is sleeping.

TY!!!!!!

Jeremiah 1:7

We had the most amazing prayer time tonight at church. Every other week, we meet in the evening to eat together and pray. We pray first. Tonight Rick asked Ty to open. I could tell it made him a little uncomfortable but I think he's used to it. Rick, and all the other men at the church, don't treat him as if he's just a kid or a "youth". They treat him like a fellow member, a peer of sorts. They involve him in conversations and let him have input. Most of the time he sits and listens. He plays with the other boys, the ones closer to his age. He plays with the little ones. Jack (age 4) especially adores him.

Two years ago, Ty prayed every night for God to bring a boy his age to Springville church. We prayed with him. I saw how much he missed his friends from Moody. I saw him grow more and more disheartened. Then I saw him give up. One year ago, Ty hated Springville. He was angry with God.

I saw something amazing happen though. I saw my son become part of a church. Not part of a youth group or part of a Bible study for people his age, but part of a church - as a whole. It took some time, a detox in a way. He was so accustomed to being consigned to his peers that he didn't realize he was part of a bigger body.

Tonight, Ty prayed not just the one time to open, but a total of three times. Maggie prayed. Gracie prayed. Three of the other kids prayed as well. Ty's prayer was not for people his own age, as he used to pray, but for "other Christians" who didn't have what he has. Who didn't have a church family... those were his words, a "church family that will love them."

I can recount a similar series of events for Maggie.

A couple of months ago my teenagers sat at the kitchen table and tearfully expressed gratitude. They love being part of a whole. There is something to be said for not having a traditional youth group. There is such a benefit in my teenaged daughter sitting in women's Bible study and learning, from watching and listening, how to be a godly woman. There is such benefit in my teenaged son working side by side with godly men who teach him, not just how to install siding, but how to live out the gospel.

I see so many youth who depend solely on their peers for spiritual support, who go to churches with sketchy theology just because they have good programs for kids their age. I promise, I am not anti-youth group. I think Stokes does a great job. But I think sometimes we, as communing adults, take it too far. We allow the presence of a paid youth worker to relieve us of the privilege of coming along side younger believers and investing in their lives.

Maybe I'm just expressing my own experiences. Maybe God has just been particularly gracious to my church planting children. Maybe we can have it both ways, I don't know. What I do know is that my children are growing and flourishing and really happy. Happier than I've ever seen them. They're not more comfortable. In fact, they feel more pain in the form of compassion and sorrow. They are, however, content and more aware of their place in a whole, as opposed to seeking their own pleasure.

Teaching our youth to have a kingdom mindset and heart for the lost requires them to know their place in the Kingdom. It requires them to know the rest of the body. What good is it to teach them how to resist peer pressure if they're not given a greater affection? What benefit is it to teach them how to relate to others if they're never around people who are different than themselves (in age, experience and struggle)? My children are part of the Body of Christ. They needed to know that. They need their covenant aunts, uncles, grandparents, and yes, peers. They need time together with people their own age, but they also need all of us.

The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon

Oh, the lengths my children will go to in order to not wash a dish.

They will:
A.) Go hungry.
B.) Eat soup/ice cream with a fork
C.) Use a serving utensil that will not fit into their mouths
D.)Plead and give me puppy eyes, wanting me to wash something for them
E.) Eat something they don't like, instead of what they do like

When I say, "Wash the dish/spoon/fork!" They usually just respond with "nevermind" or "this is fine, really" or *heavy sigh*.

Good grief. They know how to do the dishes; it's part of their chores. Lazy, lazy, lazy children.

November 1995

November 1995, one year almost to the day after my first pregnancy ended in a heartbreaking miscarraige, I tried to get comfortable on the hard table at the doctor's office. My bladder was filled to capacity; my back was aching a little bit and my heart was full of anxiety. The untrasound tech smiled when she re-entered the room.

"Ready?" she asked happily.

I took Chris's hand and nodded. "I think so."

I lay in the dark and made small talk, chatter really, to cover my nerves as she moved the goo around on my belly with the wand. Finally, she turned the monitor around and used the cursor to point to a fluttering movement on the screen.

"That's the baby's heart," she said.

"The kidney's look good," she said.

"The head circumferance is just right," she said.

"That little string of pearls is the spine," she said.

"Do you want to know the sex?" she said

We affirmed we did want to know.

"See that little equal sign there? That means it's a girl!" she said.

I watched in wonder and laughter as my little tiny daughter used my full bladder for a trampoline. It took a minute for the terror to set in.

A girl. A daughter. A baby daughter who would turn into a teenaged daughter. She was going to hate me one day.

For the next two days I agonized. I rubbed my distended belly and talked to my still unnamed daughter, begging her not to hate me.

I remember staring at my hand-sewn striped curtains next to my bed and praying. Then the Holy Spirit prompted a thought. Enjoy her. Enjoy her today, right now. And tomorrow, just enjoy her. Every day, enjoy her. Then by the time she's a teenager, you'll be so used to enjoying her, it will be second nature.

I really, truly tried to do that. Every single day of Maggie's life, the good and the bad; the easy and the terrifying... I have enjoyed her.

And she doesn't hate me.

And I don't hate her.

We are friends and she listens and respects me and I try to take that seriously and never be flippant with her feelings.

Today she is seventeen. Seventeen! I get to keep her for one more year, then she will follow the Spirit into her own grown up life. She is a constant joy, an amazing life and a beautiful soul. Her enthusiasm shines from her in waves and her heart.... oh, her heart. Her heart is turned toward the Father and toward the lost. God has grown her into such a beautiful, sensitive, articulate young woman.

I am so thankful. So very, very, very thankful.

I love you, my little pearl princess.

To The Future Me...

Slow day at the Sharp House today. I have spent the day reading. All. Day. Long. For the first time in ages and ages. Loverly.

John Ponder has been here for, let's see... nine days. Honestly, that boy could live here permanently and no one would mind. We love that guy.

Mags and Grace spent most of the day at the Hansen's. Brody and John both got bored about seven tonight and decided to do jigsaw puzzles. That was calmly pleasant until Brody decided to go get another one, a floor puzzle of the United States, and they started to race. Then it got exciting. The rest of us picked teams and jumped in. Then we finished at the same time! It was hilarious.

So now, Brody is looking at a magazine; Gracie and Maggie are eating; Ty and John are roaming the house being bored again. Chris is sleeping. One more hour until I wake him up. And I am blogging.

Like I said, it's a slow day. I'm only blogging it to remember it. Years from now, when they're all gone from home and I am sitting in my clean, quiet house, this post will make me smile. So, Future Me, smile. And maybe do a jigsaw puzzle.


And fold some socks, for heaven's sake!