Hope for Feeling Overwhelmed & Discouraged

My husband climbs into bed at night having to dust the fruit loop crumbs off the sheets. He doesn’t like it. I wipe them out of my side knowing why they were there---it was easier.

Easier to not say “no”

Easier to not fight with kids about where we eat food and where we don’t

Easier to go to the bathroom alone and let them do what they want.

Easier to not engage.

But, I keep questioning, “Is my husband right?” I don’t like crumbs in the bed either. I often ignore what I like and give in to make it feel easy. I confuse resilience, the ability to withstand or recover quickly from a difficult situation, with being laid back. I think I am withstanding the toddler years because I am not entering the battle with them over e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g they do. I think I recover quickly because a Diet Coke or a cookie later and my mood has changed.

Looking back on those years with three little ones, four-years-old and under I actually think it was survival. That is how we ignore self-care and how we grow numb. We stop caring. We aren’t enduring or withstanding difficult things, we are hiding from them! I started to become resilient when I decided to start caring again. When I saw how much the numbness was stealing from me. It allowed me to not be so bothered but it also confined me to not feeling joy.

I think it happened slowly for me, this awakening to all I had let die in my heart. I pushed away hurt feelings, I pretended like a good mom who wouldn’t let their toddler’s yelling tantrums hurt their feelings. I didn’t ask my husband for help because I wanted to be a good wife and a mom other moms envied and I was deceived in thinking that meant I did everything. I believed a lie that I shouldn’t need to recover from difficult situations because I shouldn’t think motherhood is difficult. This should be easy for ME.

There is a lyric in a Kenny Chesney song, The Woman with You that says, “Been juggling, struggling, closing big deals. Dancing backwards in high heels.” I felt that like when I worked full-time before kids. I could manage 100+ people and big budgets and multitask and thrived under stress. So, this mom thing, why was it getting the better of me?

I reacted to the hurt feelings when I would yell back at my kids. When they asked me “for one more thing” during bedtime, I said those white lie words “after I do the dishes I will bring it to you” knowing full well they would be asleep and I wouldn’t have to go back in their room. I also knew that because I didn’t say “no” I wouldn’t have to deal with their dislike of my answer.  I wasn’t being honest with them because I wasn’t being honest with myself.

If we are not aware of how we feel or react in a situation we will easily be defeated by it. Motherhood can blow us around like a plastic Kroger bag in the parking lot beating us against buildings and hooking us onto tree limbs, leaving us dangling for someone to rescue us.

Honesty is where resilience begins; when we become aware of this challenge called motherhood and are confident enough to admit we can’t do it all with a smile on our face.

When I began to teach my kids that I needed a quiet time too, that I couldn’t do all the chores without help, and that their tone of voice hurt my feelings I learned and taught my family who I was. They don’t just need a mom, they need me. “Me” is different from the other moms and that is what I was hiding from them. I was hiding it from myself too, believing that all those comparisons to friends revealed my failings. The release from my expectations or assumed expectations of others prompted honesty, vulnerability and freedom which gave me the opportunity to withstand the difficult situations because I could admit they were just that and no one was asking me to be perfect or unaffected, just to not run and hide.