For Those Difficult Mom Moments...

I recently came out of another gut-level mommy experience. These are the experiences in motherhood that touch the parts of your heart and character that are buried pretty deeply, and come up on very rare occasions. They are the experiences that bypass getting down on your knees, because they touch a sensitive spot we want no one to ever enter, even God. As a result, these experiences often cause us to jump from finding joy in the Lord, to becoming angry with an omnipotent God who allowed this struggle to become our reality.

What was my gut-level mommy experience? My youngest of three, Olivia, decided she no longer liked sleeping. She is 2 ½ years old. First, I should share two quick things: 1) two weeks before the start of this particular issue, without prior warning, she began to fear baths, followed by a fear of the vacuum cleaner. No, nothing happened that we can remember, and because I’m a stay-at-home/homeschool mom who RARELY uses babysitters, I’m very familiar with the goings-on in her little life; 2) I depend on my kids’ forming consistent sleeping habits. It’s when I rest, mentally, as well as accomplish a few things.

My struggle began on a Tuesday afternoon, when I put her down for a nap after returning from a doctor’s sick-visit. Granted, she had slept for about 20 minutes on the way to the pediatrician, it was now almost 2 hours later, and I knew she could sleep more. She started crying after about 15 minutes, followed by yelling. “Don’t like sleep,” is what she told me, over and over again. I thought maybe it was due to the short nap on the car ride, so I was able to let it go after trying for a while to get her to sleep. The next day, Wednesday, we stayed home. At naptime, I went to put her down, and was shocked to find myself revisiting the scene from the day before! By Thursday night, the same scene became a part of her bedtime routine, as well as a dislike for going to the potty, and changes in her play and eating habits. The change in sleep is what affected me the most.

This went on for a good week and a half, and in that time I experienced shock, discouragement, anger, resentment, guilt, you name it, all of which tried to override my normal “mommy” feelings of patience, concern and love. In order to cope at naptime, I’d take my cell phone into the bedroom with me so that I could respond to my e-mail while I sat by Olivia’s bed waiting for her to fall into a deep sleep that never came. Instead, I found myself furiously texting my husband about my inability to mother our children as God intended, after demanding from her that she must get to sleep. Every time I thought she was asleep and got up to leave, she’d wake up, and I had to start the process all over again.

A few days later, I noticed that the Lord felt distant to me. I realized it was because I had not talked to Him for several days. As I thought about it, I knew it was because hidden in the recesses of my heart, I was angry with Him. When Olivia began to change the one thing I needed to be predictable, daily time to myself, my first thought was that maybe He was in the process of stripping me from the thing I needed, or wanted, to make my life more comfortable. I was upset, and unwilling to give Him what I thought He was asking from me. Thankfully, after recognizing my anger and why, a still small voice encouraged me that He wasn’t trying to take that time away from me. He was in the process of teaching me that He is able to walk me through the things I think I cannot handle.

Through this experience, I learned that like me, my kids also have “moments” of difficulty in their young lives. The Lord always provides either my husband, a dear friend, or a family member to walk me through my moments. Don’t I want to be that person for my children? Yes! That is part of my God-given job as a mom, and part of the desire of my heart for my motherhood experience. So, with a new perspective, I was able to take a deep breath, and steer Olivia back into her sleep routine. All isn’t exactly as it was before; she still says one or two times that she doesn’t like to sleep. But, I affirm her need to sleep; she puts her head on her pillow without a fight; and falls asleep willingly, for a good, sound time of rest!