The Burden of Motherhood in the Electronic Era

My original intent was to blog tonight about the challenging (in a good way) message that I heard at church today.  But after taking a bit of time to catch up on Facebook this evening, I felt compelled to write about something else entirely.  It actually still ties into the message I heard, but in a completely different way.

 Don't worry - I'll come back to the original post tomorrow - but for now I find my heart aching for mothers all over the U.S. - and maybe the world, though I don't know if people on Facebook in other countries are nearly as critical and judgmental as they are here, so we'll stick with the U.S.  

We have just a few more minutes until Memorial Day and I am so thankful for the service of men and women who have sacrificed so that we might have freedoms in this country that are unheard of in so many countries in the world and I want to live in a way that says that their sacrifice MEANS something to me  In the same way, as a Christian, I have access to blessings that are unheard of to so many because of Jesus and I want to live in a way that says that this means EVERYTHING to me.  This is where the message at church comes in.  The sacrifice that was made for us was COSTLY.  It was a life, and not just any life, but God's only son.  This in itself is not a new revelation - it is something that all Christians know - but in the modern church in some ways it is trivialized.  It is repeated over and over, but there is no passion or purpose behind it.  People fail to acknowledge the heartbreaking reality of that sacrifice.  The part of that message that is really standing out to me right now after my time on Facebook this evening is this:  How can we as Christians take that sacrifice that is offered through God's grace and not be willing to extend that same grace to others?  How can we look back at who we used to be and how far we have come and not be willing to encourage others who are in the place that we used to be?   If we take the grace that we have been given and we hoard it as though we are somehow special, we are dishonoring God.  If we keep it to ourselves, we are squandering it.  

So you may be wondering what it is that happened on Facebook to trigger this post.  I'm sure by now you have all heard about the gorilla that was shot in a zoo so that a 4 year old could be rescued.  I saw numerous posts with the news story and in each of them the comments made me sick to my stomach. Even worse, I had several CHRISTIAN friends who shared a meme with a picture of a gorilla and the words "Not sure why they killed me.  I was doing a better job of watching that lady's kid than she was."  The meme itself made me feel ill but some of the comments that were made in each of the posts were just downright MEAN.  I know that I am far from perfect - I'm sure that I offend somebody on a daily basis.  But I do try my best to express empathy and compassion.  And I have learned to appreciate the value of empathy so much more since I've been a mother.  After all, when Linnea was born I wanted nothing better than to be able to breastfeed her, but between the anatomy of her mouth and the fact that I'd had a reduction 7 years prior, it didn't work out.  And I was reminded on a daily basis by people on Facebook that if I wasn't breastfeeding, I wasn't giving my daughter the best.  Few people said it to me directly - but it was out there, in my face EVERY DAY.

So what do the gorilla and breastfeeding have to do with church?  Everything!  Moms have one thing in common - they want to do what is best for their children.  They want to love them and care for them.  (I intentionally use the word mom here because to me "mom" implies a loving relationship where as "mother" is simply the person who birthed a child - my interpretation only.)  Different mothers have different styles of raising their children which are impacted by their cultural background, socio-economic background, their own childhood experiences, where they live, etc.  While these styles are all different, the foundation is the same - a love for their children.  But so many moms think that their way is the RIGHT way and they fail to acknowledge the value in other parenting styles and choices - and so they sit back in their chairs and judge and belittle other moms when they make different choices and an accident happens.  When one mom fails - as all moms do at some point in their lives, probably numerous times, a flock of blood thirsty vultures descends to pick at the carcass of the mistake.  We ALL make mistakes, and sometimes the consequences are more disastrous than other times, so we should ALL be willing to extend a hand of grace.

In the same way, there are many church buildings (I say church buildings because, as followers of Christ, we are all one Church) and "denominations" and for the sake of comparison, STYLES of following Jesus, but the core is the same.  And yet this tends to be a dividing point - Christians bickering with Christians over things that mean NOTHING in light of eternity.  There are certainly base values that are important, but outside of that their is a lot of freedom - and the grace that has been poured out on us who call on Jesus is the same regardless of how badly we've messed up in the past.  Before any of us opens our mouths; or in the case of Facebook, before we set our fingers free, we should pause to ask ourselves a few questions that I have heard through the preaching of several of my pastors over the years -
-Is what I want to say LOVING?
-Is what I want to say HELPFUL? (If so, is it being said in a loving tone?  Is your intent to help or to puff yourself in comparison?)
-Is what I want to say TRUE? (Also is it factually true or is it simply a matter of opinion?)
-Do you have the authority to say what you are saying?  (Were you an eyewitness reporting what you saw?  Do you have a level of knowledge on the subject of which you are speaking?  Do you have a relationship with the person whom you are speaking about or to?)

As Christians, we have all been given far more grace than we deserve, so why don't we stop hoarding the grace that we've been given to us and reflect it outwardly in all things?  Why don't we love people, even in their sin and their mistakes and come beside them in compassion?  This doesn't mean that we are saying that their sin is okay - it just means that we are willing to love them through it.  Why don't we stop trying to place blame for everything in life and instead offer a helping hand and encouraging words to people who have made a mistake?  In most cases, the person who has sinned or the mother who let her child get into a dangerous situation is beating him or herself up already.  More than likely he or she feels guilty and ashamed at the very least.  

Certainly people have been sinning and moms have been making mistakes since Eve took a bite of the forbidden fruit.  It is the by-product of the fall.  It happens daily and it happens to all of us.   And certainly there have always been critics - people whispering their judgments behind the backs of one another, spreading gossip through their prayers, watching whomever had falling with pitying looks.  But still, their was always somewhere to go to get away from the looks and whispers of judgment.  Even as recently as the 1980's, a mistake was still simply that - a mistake.  I know this from personal experience within my own family.  When I was eight years old and my brother was 5, our family took a trip to Southern California to visit my grandma and one of the things we did was to tour the Queen Mary.  At some point during the tour my brother wandered away from the rest of us and kind of got lost in the crowd.  My mother was terrified - she was freaking out, calling for him.  We were all looking for him.  And eventually they pages through the intercom system that he had made his way to the security office and was safely waiting for us.  My mom was a wonderful mom and very attentive to us.  But she was not a helicopter parent so she did extend us both a certain amount of freedom, after all that is how we learn (did we not learn anything from Finding Nemo?)  My brother had been taught that he needed to stay close and not wander, but he chose not to listen.  This does not mean that she failed as a parent, though to her it felt that way.  She placed guilt and shame upon herself without the help of a social media firing squad.  The only people who knew about it were the people who were there and a couple of other confidants whom she could depend on.  Because they were people who loved her, she was able to learn from the mistake and move on.

But here and now in the electronic age a mother's failure is made public, her shame plastered across every form of media, paraded about for all to see and to judge.  While a story like what happened with the child and the gorilla MIGHT have made the national news 30 years ago, and people MIGHT have talked about it between themselves over coffee and people MIGHT have spoken words of judgment and condemnation in regards to the mother, all of the shame and judgment would not become a national topic of conversation among MILLIONS of people who know nothing about the situation because they were not there.  With that kind of pressure, how much harder does it become to move on and learn from it?  I can't even imagine what kind of damage that kind of negative attention can do to a woman's spirit.  What ever happened to grace?  Have we forgotten that we have all made mistakes in our lives?  Have we forgotten that we have received unending grace?  Why then can we not share just a bit of it?

Let's remember that as Americans, there are many who have died so that we can have the privileges and freedoms that we have.  Let's remember that as Christians, God's only son died so that we might have life.  Let's honor the sacrifices that have been made for us by building one another up rather than tearing one another down.

Prayers for the momma whose little one got away and fell in with the gorilla - that you would be able to find peace and healing through God - that you would be able to find refuge in God from the barrage of critics.  That if you were doing your best as a mom that you would be able to hand your guilt over to God and if you were not, that you would learn from this experience and call out to God to help you to grow in whatever area you may need growth.  

Prayers for all mommas, that you would be able to lean on God in times when you are feeling weak, when you feel like you are not doing enough, when you find your energy wearing thin.  That you would strive to do the best you can, with God's support, on any given day and to love, serve and support even those mothers with whom you rarely agree.  

Prayers for all who have sacrificed that we might have life abundant.  Prayers for the men and women who have committed to protecting our country, that God's protection would be over you and your families - and that if you don't know him that you will come to know him as your true protector.  And most importantly, prayers of thanksgiving for the amazing and glorious sacrifice of Jesus.  

Misplaced Gifts

When I was growing up, my mom would often buy gifts for people in our family when she happened to see something on sale that made her think of a specific person.  She would then proceed to stow the gifts away until an "appropriate" gift giving occasion.  Sometimes, when an occasion rolled around, such as a birthday or Christmas, she would remember having bought a specific gift, but she had lost track of it in the time that had passed since she bought it.  This meant a lot of extra time spent looking around for the gift.  Sometimes the misplaced gift wasn't found in time for the occasion for which it was intended and a new gift would be purchased.  Other times my mom would look at a gift and begin to question whether the recipient would actually like the gift.  Some gifts were just forgotten in the busyness of life.  So many gifts ended up in boxes in the closet, never to be given for whatever reason.  Many years later, when we stumbled upon them again, some of them were no longer relevant for whatever reason - a season of life when it would have been appropriate had passed, the trend had come and gone, the intended recipient had gotten older and outgrown the gift.

Right now I'm in a stage in my life where I have stumbled upon the box of gifts that God has given me that I have just stowed away in the closet and I find myself remembering when "I used to" pray fervently and "I used to" write songs and poems and essays and "I used to" love singing worship and "I used to" take care of my body and so many other things "I used to" do.   Over the last several years God has blessed me with a husband and a beautiful daughter, but I have become so wrapped up in my blessings, I forgot all about the gifts that God has given me to share with others.  Gradually, one by one, they have been shoved aside because there's "just no time" or "I'm too tired" or "I can't do it by myself."  What I've discovered as I've begun to unpack the box again, is that the reason I have no time, energy or motivation is because my focus switched from the giver of the gifts and the blessings (God) to the recipient (me).  And the scary part is that I didn't even realize it was happening.

I think part of me expected God's blessings to be without difficulty.  I'm not sure why I thought that, because the Bible is filled with people who had to face challenges even in their blessings.  But when it was finally time for me to receive the blessings I had waited so long for, things were actually quite difficult and I sometimes found myself questioning if my life was really a blessing or if I was being punished for some mistake I had made in the past.  Most of the time, I snapped out of it quickly because I had good friends who shared their own struggles with us which made it clear that it was totally normal.  But as time went on, our friends moved on to other things, they took different paths, and we found ourselves growing more isolated.  When God called us to move, we knew that it would be difficult because it would mean leaving behind even the friends we did have, but we were excited to see how God would grow our family through it.

As excited as I was to experience something new, I think it was more difficult for me.  I have a much harder time meeting people and getting to know people than Josh does.  I was also sort of in a phase of mourning because my season of staying at home with Linnea was coming to an end.  I wouldn't have been able to continue staying home with her in Reno, either, but going through it away from my mom friends made it more difficult.  With all that was happening when we first moved, we fell out of the practice of praying together nightly, which we had been doing pretty much since we got married.  We were each praying on our own, but for me not praying together made me feel more isolated.  I let so many things get between myself and God that it wasn't until we finally made a couple of connections with people here that I realized that even my joy had been shoved away in the box in the back of the closet.

Once I found my joy again (which still comes and goes since I'm out of practice) I started digging through that box and I found my prayer and I started praying daily with Linnea so that she will not be afraid of praying out loud.  I found my love for learning and Josh and I picked out a devotional to do in the evenings.  I found my desire to be healthy and I have hand more than about 5 sodas in the last eight weeks - and I'm working on the rest.  And most recently, I found my passion.  Over the last six months, most of the times I thought about writing it was, "Gee - I wish I could find a way to make money with my writing." And then I would find myself stuck, completely unable to write because my motives were wrong.  I was not enjoying the gift that God gave me and I wasn't sharing it.  Instead I wanted to pimp it out to the highest bidder.  That may sound a bit crass, but that is literally what I was trying to do.  I was trying to write about subjects of which I knew little just to meet the needs of a paying publication rather than writing from the overflow of my heart.

Much like the gifts my mom bought, my passion for writing has sat in the closet getting stale.  It is a little bit dusty and could use some polishing because I'm out of practice.  Some of the ideas I've had are no longer relevant because times have changed since the last time I was committed to writing regularly.  And some ideas have been forgotten.  I have been waiting around until I "feel like" writing or until I think of something "good enough" to draw the attention of some readers - but God gave me this gift for so much more.  He has called me to write for my enjoyment and hopefully for simple entertainment value.  He has called me to write as a way to process my thoughts about Him and my journey through life and faith.  And he has called me to write as a way to connect with people I may not have ever talked to otherwise.