Motherhood: It's Not Graceful, But It Is Grace-full

My two-and-a-half-year-old is the kind of sweet that I just want to squish. Her glowing cheeks and pudgy flesh bracelets and diaper-clad butukis. I just want to squish her.

When we’re in a library or church or at a 3 a.m. rendezvous to pull the covers back up, I whisper gently to my little love. And she glares at me and says, “Talk REAL.” Gentle whispers are no longer tolerated.

She has become self-aware, like when, five hours into our road trip, she tugged on her seat belt and screamed, “I’m stuck!”

And the destruction that has been part of her nature is now the object of her fascination. She will list things she wants to destroy, to gauge how funny the threat is: “I will hang from the lights and break your eyeballs and tear up this blanket! Ah hahahhaha!”

Yesterday, when I walked into the room, she casually looked up at me and said, “Hi, Mama. I’m going to break you!”

Truer words, eh?

I’ve never been more aware of my brokenness than in motherhood. Yes, I’m sinful and bent toward destruction (not unlike my toddler, it’s worth noting). But my brokenness also plays out in a general reality that I’m not quite in working order.

Like a tricycle with a wobbly wheel, I just can’t get the job done gracefully. I leave laundry in the washing machine for too long, I meal-plan for only three days out of the week, I forget to brush hair and wipe faces for picture day. It’s not graceful, but it is grace-full.

With my brokenness, I’ve learned to give myself grace and receive it. What a silly thing, that we wouldn’t want to accept grace, that we’d have to learn to. But in a culture where Crossfit is a thing, I suppose it isn’t so crazy that we would try to muscle through whatever shame or failure or flailing we experience.

(On that note, maybe I’ve been so reluctant to really embrace Crossfit – something I’ve been flirting with for a year – because I’m just learning to be gentle with myself, and Olympic lifts and lung burners are just not gentle.)

Anyway, there is a rope wound around my heart that pulls me when I feel broken, when I’m faced with the reality that this job of mothering, adulting, living, is really too much for me. And then the grace brings some slack, and I can breathe and my heart can beat, and I can go on.

But the other side of this rope tugs and tells me that I can be strong. That I was created for an abundant life and to glorify a big God and to do important things, like writing a book, or comforting a scared girl who fell off her bike, or making a beautiful meal with centerpieces and all.

I can only imagine that the slack that this strong rope brings is grace too. Because whether I feel weak or I feel strong, I need grace. I need to be tethered to something, and what a gift, if that can be grace.

It’s certainly worth clarifying that by grace I mean the free and unmerited favor of God, God's forgiveness of my sins and unconditional love, all because of Jesus Christ. Giving myself grace means reminding myself of this.

So yeah, my kids break me. When my littlest rubs my back and says, “Close your eyes, sweet, sweet child. Go to sleep now.” (Which I have never said to her. Seriously, where do they get this stuff?!) Or if she is defiant and oblivious and takes her diaper off and steps in poop and gets angry at me for whatever is “disgusting” on her foot.

Yep, either way, I’m broken. I’m reminded of both the vastness of my love and the tediousness of my role, and I’m overwhelmed by both.

But my heart can keep beating, and I can keep going, because I am known and forgiven and loved by God. There is grace.

In other words, there might be mildewed laundry in my machine, poop on my wood floor, and leftovers on the table with candles and linen napkins. But I know it’s OK, because there’s grace. And also, I’m probably too sore to care, because Crossfit.

What am I doing.