A Prayer Over My Mothering

I am very lucky to have the good job I have. I’ve been lucky to have it for 12 years. Still, my life has changed a lot lately and the job itself has changed over the years. I find myself now wondering if I’m called to do this job as I once was.
I am blessed to be able to work and also have my daughter along, but it also creates challenges to do so. I am often wondering what would be best for my baby and my client, because my attention is always split now. It’s kind of like I get to do all the work of a Stay at Home Mom, and do it all while doing all the work of my actual job as a working Mom.
The worries are daily. Would it be better to have my daughter in daycare so she got some kind of more structured schedule and routine, so the people would be there to focus on her, instead of always distracted from helping her? I work nights often of late and it bothers me so much to have to wake her sleeping self up to take her home. I hate also having to get her back to bed there. It’s no wonder she never has gotten into a routine at night and learned to sleep well. This also often leads to missed baths and teeth brushings and that adds to the motherly guilt and worry and questioning.
Other days I dress her while she’s still sleeping, or sometimes on the days we’ll work that late, and put her in the car to eat her breakfast on the road. I could wake her up earlier instead, should I do that? Would that help?
It’s not that she has some sort of awful time, and like I said, I’m blessed to have my job, I know. I’ve worked here 12 years now and I finally make more per hour than the years I’ve worked here. I have benefits which have been hard to come by in the years after the bubble pop. I get to see my sister and my daughter gets to see her aunt. But… but… there’s always the worry and the questions. There’s always this idea that I could be doing it better, giving her a better life.
It actually doesn’t help that my husband makes enough money that if we wanted to and were careful we could exist on only his income. It makes it harder, kind of, because it gives me this idea that I should be being a stay at home mom full time, that that would be the best thing for this little growing person who is so wonderful and needs so much attention. It just makes the questions bigger.
Meanwhile, Alice loves stimulation and going places and doing things constantly, and while she needs and wants a lot of attention and I feel divided and like I’m doing neither job as well as I’d like, she misses her Aunt when we don’t come to work. She asks to go places all the time when we do stay home. Am I worrying for nothing?
And in the end, I realize, that all I need to do is pray. The answers all sit with God, and He has made this challenge particularly for me, to grow my Spirit in the direction He is leading me. And Alice. If I believe He is leading me, I have to further believe He is leading and forming her.

And so the prayer:

Lord,
I know You have given me this challenge for a reason. I know I need to give these worries up to You and allow You to work out the solution to what feels like an impossible question. I know that what to me feels like it would be reopening of old wounds to even speak about, to You it is nothing but a speck to be blown away. I pray today that You work in this situation. Give me the right words to speak about what I think I need and what I think I need to do for my baby and myself, give me the right way to handle this situation. And show me, Lord, what will be best for her in the long run. Teach me how to Mother with the love and Grace only You can supply, and show me where You are calling me now. Give me Your leading, Lord, as strong as I once felt it. Allow me to see clearly my path again, and to be able to take my daughter on that walk with me, as I carry her everywhere else.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

A Prayer To Place Responsibility Where It Belongs

New International Version
Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” And they were amazed at him. Mark 12:17

 

It’s a bit personal and not what I usually do on this blog, but we’re in melt down time around this house lately and I need somewhere to put all this angst, so I’m talking to you, Dear Readers. 

 

All my life I’ve fed my ego on being the good girl, the teacher’s pet, the good daughter. I don’t know what it was that made me so very determined and from such a young age and for such a long time that if I was just GOOD ENOUGH then everything else would be okay. I think the root of it comes from a deep and lasting feeling of unworthiness. I remember being very very young, maybe six or seven or even younger and hearing some adult tell me how much I should be appreciative of how good I had it, and they told me of kids who didn’t have it good. I knew lots of kids like that anyhow, who had rough little tough lives. Anyhow, I don’t remember who was talking to me or even more specifically what they said, but I remember getting very scared and feeling very much like they were right. I had a great, cushy, lovely, even idyllic life as a child, and I couldn’t figure out why I had that kind of life and kids around me had lives so different as to look terrifying to me.

And from then on, I built myself a nice personal mythology of sorts. This idea that I could make the world better, make people happier, by being a good girl was then reinforced my whole life by people who only thought they were doing the natural and right thing of positively reinforcing the good behavior they saw in me. But for me, for some reason, it became a perverted thing. It became a bit of me trying to think I was in control, trying to compete with God.

You see, for me, it meant if I could just be good enough, perfect enough, behave in the right way, I could fix people, I could make them happy, and I could RULE THE WORLD BWAHAHAHAHA… okay, not that last part, but you get it.

I’ve realized many times that this isn’t right, and as an objective, mostly sane person I have been trying to work my way back to realizing and living like I know it isn’t good, or true, or right. I have asked for forgiveness for it many times. But in the squirrelly way of the workings of a modern human brain, I can’t just blow down the wall of the room where I keep the bat-nut crazy butt part of me that still believes this. I have to remove it brick by brick, and it’s a lot of taking one brick down and finding two jumped up in its place. Still, I’m working on it. 

For me, I think one major obstacle to this has been that I still live with my mother. She and my little sister who is disabled. I joined a siblings of disabled people’s group once and talked to some people on there about how desperately responsible I always felt and how awful it was to feel trapped in a life you didn’t choose. At the time, I wasn’t yet married and I despaired of ever meeting anyone who could be good to me, a partner for my life, and understand my commitment to my little sister. After hearing about a lot of failed marriages where people thought they’d met that person or married a person just to escape the responsibility they felt for their disabled siblings, I left the group with an even more despairing heart.

Well, I met the man a few years later, after so much praying and even resigning myself to living with my mother, her husband, and my sister for the rest of my life. I had myself convinced that taking care of April and never asking for or really seeking anything my heart wanted (a husband, a partner for life who would put my well being first, a child, oh a child!) was what God wanted of me. I paid close attention to all those verses about being a servant and I thought I was doing that. 

I was so wrong. The part of me that God had planted the dream of a family in kept creeping back open. And finally, I asked. I truly prayed with an open heart and I put myself out there into the world in a way I hadn’t before, believing that this time if God didn’t send me someone, He really never meant to. I might have even been challenging Him. And He sent me my Stephen, and we had our Alice, and things have been so good. There’s a little piece of my heart now that is blooming and bright and like a springtime window opened into a dusty room that had been closed for a very long winter. 

And it isn’t that I don’t love my sister or my mother, but these new things, this little bit of an open heart, has led to so much more. My husband and I have started studying books and the Bible and seeking God’s plan for us, and asking Him to put us solidly on His path for our lives, and changes have started. They’re painful. Parts of me that haven’t breathed in the light for a long time are having a hard time facing all this bright sunny day stuff.

I am having a hard time giving back to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Or, in this case, giving back to my Mother what was always my Mother’s: her child. April Ann is not my child. I love her more as a sister than I ever dared think I would, but it is a relief to be able to slowly start accepting that she is not my responsibility. Not in the way I had myself believing before. Not to the exclusion of any of my own dreams and happiness. And not solely. I truly felt for many years that if I didn’t look out for April’s best interest, maybe no one would. And it isn’t anyone else’s fault that I thought that way, it’s the fault of my own danged, oversized, ridiculous ego and idea of myself. It is my own sin that let me think that way. I am so so repentant of that. 

The funniest part of all of this is that I also realized I have long felt responsible for my own mother. I’ve kind of realized that in small ways for a long time, but to really think on it now, it’s appalling. How did I let my own mind make such a crass and stupid role reversal? It wasn’t her fault, that’s certain. One thing I am responsible for is my own self and my own thinking, so it’s my fault. I let this happen. And now, even though it’s painful in some ways, I’ve got to let the healing and changing back and better thinking happen.

I have to let it be that I am only responsible for me. There’s no other way. I can’t keep killing myself trying to do and be the impossible, and it only takes me farther from God because it is blasphemous, horrid thinking that leads me to believe I can do things without Him. I am nothing, no thing at all, without Him. And I am only any thing because He has called me so. I am His child, and I am loved, and that should be enough for my ego. 

I am letting it all go, and letting God be responsible for His children, without my interference.

Will you pray with me?

 

Lord, I know I have sinned. I know I have too often put my own importance above You. I know I have not turned to you when I should have, I know I have too often thought I could go it alone. I see now that I was building myself up, but it was tearing You down and not allowing your presence in my life. Please, Lord, work in me. Make me wholly and truly Your vessel. Give me a clean heart, and heal my broken ways, Father, and allow me to realize that any time I feel the need to fix, to falsely cheer, to claim responsibility for things I can not, I need to instead turn to You. I give it all to You tonight, Father, and I pray You forgive me my sins and help me to establish new and healthy ways of being. I Thank You because I know that in your timelessness You have already brought me victory over this battle within. I Thank You that you have given me the clear view of where to put my feet to stay on Your path. I am so grateful that You are working within me in this way, stretching me and making me to step out in Faith, knowing that hurts are temporary, but my relationship with You is the only eternal thing. I am grateful that I can fail in front of you, Lord, and You only love me for it. The only truly unconditional love is from You, God, and I need to stop thinking I can manufacture it myself. I Thank You for teaching me that, and for healing me from my intrusive, enabling, egotistical habits. In Jesus’ Holy Name, Amen.

A Prayer For Myself

Dear Lord, I know that my Mother needs a true partner and helper in her life, who also treats her and April with love and respect, but I realize now that I am only getting in the way by trying to be that helper myself. I am getting in the way and I am overwhelming myself and by trying to be all things to all people, I am become unable to really help anyone, much less myself and my own daughter and family. LORD, I am crying out to you for help, for a way to change this situation so that we can all be more content and more able to serve your purposes. Lord, I feel like you have been leading me to this longer than I can quite comprehend, and I am so sorry that I let my fear overcome me when I should have been stepping out in faith long before this. Lord, Please teach me the way You would have me go on, show me where I can do the most good toward Your will for me and Your calling to me. Allow me to stop thinking of possible changes like a divorce between my Mother and I, allow me to realize that we probably are not the best things for each other and that it is unhealthy that I even think that. Lord, help me let go! I have the hardest time of all with letting go and letting you lead. I claim to know that You will protect me and take care of me, and yet, I keep trying to fix things that I should just pray about. Please, heal these parts of my heart that are grieving for a way of life I need to leave behind me, heal my mind of these perverse ways of thinking that have only led to hurting and relationships that don’t work. Help me not to keep chewing on old insults and allowing myself to be hurt by what other people say and think, because You are what matters, and I and my husband are who You say we are in Your word, not who anyone else accuses us of being, including my Mother. Lord, we pray You usher in new understanding between us as a family and allow us the space we need to be able to be good for each other again. I pray You show us how not to dwell on old hurts, and how not to hurt each other anymore. I Thank You for the clarity that has brought us to these decisions and for keeping the paths in front of us clear as well. In Jesus’ Holy Name, Amen.