(A Little Too Honest) Confessions of a Bad Mom

I’ve been in a slump.  Like, a big one.  It seems that my life is on repeat on an annoying song that makes me want to pull my hair out and ogre-scream in frustration.

A few weeks ago Josh was watching Groundhog Day. You remember that one.  Bill Murray is living Groundhog Day every day.  The same song wakes him every morning.  The same people greet him, unaware of the repetition of his life.  No matter what, it’s the same thing.  Every. Day. 

I sat watching the movie, mouth agape, at the reflection of my own life.  Every day the same thing.  The alarm goes off.  The kids are woken.  We all get dressed.  The big kids make their lunches as I wrangle the little kids.  We load up in the van and I drop kids off at their respective schools.  I spend the remainder of the day trying to catch up on housework.  This is impossible as I have three little kids home during the day and they are all very capable of undoing any chore I complete.  Laundry folded?  Not anymore. The baby decided to use the folded laundry as a nest envied by every mouse on Earth when my back was turned because the 2-year-old was quiet so I checked on him really quickly only to discover he had tried to get his own snack and was sitting on the floor of the kitchen surrounded by full and empty fruit snack pouches that were once on a high shelf in the pantry in a plastic box with a locking lid.  Not to mention the 3-year-old who keeps squealing at the top of her lungs because her little brother took her spot on the couch, or her book, or her toy, or her turn on the TV, or her breathing space.

And then 3 o’clock hits and the four big kids get home from school wanting food, a nap, TV time, a ride to Scouts or youth activities or a ride home from track or drama club or tutoring.

Within two hours I need to have dinner ready because Josh works nights and if I don’t have food for him he won’t eat until 2am.  Or, sometimes, I have food for him but he ended up sleeping later and doesn’t have time to eat and leaves without the nowhere-near-gourmet dinner I’ve prepared. 

After that it’s the nightly fights of dishes, picking up the toys, getting ready for bed, why didn’t you do your homework earlier?, you need WHAT for school tomorrow?, and just the typical teenage angst/toddler meltdown depending on the age of the kids.  Either way, it’s basically the same thing.

I’m burned out.  I don’t do anything for myself.  And I know why I don’t.  If I take time to do something I want to do, I’m not doing something I should do.  Therefore, I’m not a good mother.  Therefore, I’m selfish.  Or unfit.  Or a bad wife.  Or a horrible housekeeper.  Or a terrible cook/meal planner. 

Who am I even trying to prove myself to?  My husband?  Yes.  My kids? Yes.  My neighbor? Yes.  The girls from church (my only non-virtual social network)?  Yes.  Myself?  No.

No, I’m not trying to prove anything to myself.  Because I already know that I’m a horrible housekeeper.  I already know that I don’t like cooking.  I already know that my kids watch WAY too much TV.  I already know that it takes me a week to finish folding and putting away laundry even if it only takes a day to wash it.

I am not the ideal candidate for being a Pinterest-crafting, housework-loving, creative-playing stay-at-home mom. 

Then why do I even try?

Hence, my depressing dilemma.

I’ve often heard that if you have a question you can ask the Lord and He’ll answer you.  I know that happens.  I’ve experienced it before.  But I decided to see if maybe I’d get lucky at church on Sunday and get some insight as to why my life is so...ugh.

It was Easter Sunday.  Our ward has a new meeting time of 2pm.  It’s still new enough that I haven’t quite figured out how to make it work.  Despite my loathing of scrubbing toilets, I do enjoy creating a good strategy.  A plan.  Lists of all kinds are my friends.  But I don’t have this new meeting time down yet. 

Josh got home from work and we had our Easter egg hunts before he went off to bed.  Then the kids ate candy and played with the new games the Easter Bunny brought while I made dinner: BBQ pulled pork, potato salad, macaroni salad, fruit salad, deviled eggs.  We’d had ham the previous Sunday when family had been in town so I went a different way for dinner.  Specifically, I needed something that we could come home from church at 5:10pm and it would all be magically ready for us to eat since Josh’s shift started at 6pm and he needed to leave by 5:45.  If I stay at church the entire three-hour block I can’t plan to cook anything quickly enough for him to eat before heading out for the night. And I still had to get kids bathed, dressed, combed, and find church shoes.  This needed to be done close enough to church time that they can’t mess themselves up but not so late that we miss the first hour of church.  And somewhere in there I really needed to try to get a shower myself.

To make a long story short, Sunday afternoons are stressful.

Then there’s the whole taking seven kids to church by myself fiasco.  The arguments over who sits by mom and who sat by me last week and who can fit on my lap so the bigger kids can sit next to me and fussy kids because it’s naptime during Sacrament Meeting and I forgot the snacks to keep the little ones quiet.

I tried to focus on the purpose of Sacrament Meeting – partaking of the Sacrament, renewing my baptismal covenants.  My thoughts were quickly distracted from this sacred ordinance as I tried to balance two kids on my lap and make sure they each only took one piece of bread, not a handful, and later that the water they spill from the little cup gets mostly on me and not the floor.  What is supposed to be a spiritual time of meditation and prayer is spent shushing and balancing and grabbing little hands reaching for more “snack.”  I can’t even begin to tell you how unworthy of the Sacrament I feel just admitting all of this.

But I looked forward to the talks about the Savior.  About His sacrifice for us and His gift of resurrection for every person.  And then the thought entered my mind: We’re told Jesus knows each of our sorrows, our griefs.  He experienced all pain in the Garden of Gethsemane.  And the nagging, arrogant, rebellious voice in my head had the audacity to argue that He never experienced my life.  He never knew the monotony of 21^st century routines. He never had little kids that bombarded His every move and kept Him from accomplishing any of His goals or desires.  Of course, I know His life was much more difficult.  He suffered beyond anything I can understand.  But, how does he understand me?

And that’s when it happened. 

I wanted to prove God and His ability to answer my questions.

Despite my pride and self-importance, He sent me a realization.

There had been a special musical number by a young girl on the harp (it was pretty amazing).  Usually there’s only one musical number per meeting, but for some reason there were two that day.  The second musical break was a congregational hymn, Where Can I Turn for Peace?  There were phrases that stuck out to me:

Where is my solace?

Where, when my aching grows…where can I run?

Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?

And then the third verse stunned me into silence and burned tears in my eyes.

He answers privately,

Reaches my reaching

In my Gethsemane, Savior and Friend.

“In my Gethsemane”?  MY Gethsemane?  My quiet corner of the world (or just my mind) where I suffer alone.  My attempts to give everything I have to everyone else and leave nothing for myself.  My quiet pleadings for solace but not knowing when they will ever be answered, if they even can be.

I realized, this was what I was experiencing.  Not a slump.  Not a monotonous routine to be endured.  My own Gethsemane where I felt alone, wounded, overwhelmed.  Suffering.

But as the hymn explains, I am not alone.  My Savoir and Friend is there with me.  I have a hard job right now.  My job description includes many things I am not good at or don’t enjoy doing.  My husband works hard to provide for us and is often either at work or asleep.  I do a lot on my own.  But I am never alone.  He guides me when I know I need to intercede in my teenager’s life.  He inspires me with individual responses to each of my children.  He reminds me of my goals and my ability to accomplish them in the past.  He prompts me with motivation to make our home livable and meals edible so it’s a delight (or at least not a dread) for Josh to come home to.

Of course, there’s no immediate solution to any of my troubles.  It took me three days to finally sit down to write this out because I felt it necessary to do other chores before the “frivolousness” of writing my feelings.  And there are toys strewn across the floor, the kitchen needs a good scrubbing, and towels need to be washed.  But there seems to be a bit more perspective now.  What’s important?  A clean house?  Yes.  Is it the most important? Well, sometimes it is.  Right now, though, I need to remember what I need.  And right now I need to recognize the good in my life.  My family.  My Savior.  Easter Sunday can be buried by the expectations of the obligatory Easter Bunny, or egg hunts, or rushing to church on time.  But really, it’s about the Savior and His Gethsemane for us.  For me.  In His Gethsemane he suffered for me.  In my Gethsemane he suffers with me. He does understand me.

 And He loves me anyway.