Going back to work has been hard. I feel like a brat to even write that sentence, honestly. I have an amazing boss who has bent over backwards to make the transition for me as smooth as possible. Compared to what most working moms do, the time I'm away from Noah is so small. Noah is in wonderful hands when I'm not with him. He is either with his daddy or with a dear friend that is like a sister to me and loves him like her own. Nonetheless, it has still been very challenging. He is still not with me. When I'm at work, I cannot be in control. Who am I kidding, right? Every time I sit down to write one of these things, I share with you how I am learning I cannot be in control. You are probably as tired of hearing it as I am of learning it. I'm so thankful for a God that pursues me in my struggle.
Somewhere along the way I bought into the idea that a "mother knows best". While I love the sentiment of that statement, it comes with a heavy burden. What happens when I don't know best? What if I don't know how to help him take a bottle better for his daddy or how to sleep at the sitter's house? What if I can't figure out how to fix his hurting tummy or mysterious diarrhea? To complicate it even further, I have a job that operates on the assumption that "teacher knows best". What if I can't even focus on being a teacher because I'm too busy trying to figure out how to be a mommy? Honestly, if Noah's hope rests in my ability to know what is best for him, we are both going to wind up really bad off.
I'm going to shake things up a bit and say that I don't think a mother knows best for her child. I think that's a false hope that creates a need for me to live up to something that I wasn't designed to. There is at least one time a day where I look at my son and think, "I have no clue what the heck I'm doing." And that is how it should be. Every day that desperate feeling of inadequacy points me to a Father who does know best, for Noah and for me.
A word I've used to describe trying to balance being a mother and a teacher is "overwhelmed". I've told many close friends and family that this whole process has been overwhelming. I was sitting at the table eating breakfast yesterday when I felt the Spirit say, "NOTHING should ever have the power to overwhelm you except for Me." Ouch God.
He is overwhelming. The fact that He created life in my body, gave me the joy of experiencing His love through Noah's eyes, and has even given me the ability to work at a job where I earn money to help provide for him is overwhelming. When my hope is resting in the belief that I know what is best for Noah, I will most definitely spend many days feeling overwhelmed by the wrong things. Instead, I want to spend my days trusting that the Father not only knows best, but that He has orchestrated a plan that includes the very best for us. He has offered us abundant life when we choose to live in relationship with Him. We get invited to share inheritance as sons and daughters of the Most High God. That, dear friends, is overwhelming.
