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Overview
Mom to Mom strongly encourages every mom who wrestles with the frustrations and fears of motherhood. Elisa Morgan reassures you that you don’t need all the answers about mothering as long as you know where to go with the questions. In brief, heart-to-heart chapters, she shares biblical principles and the lessons life has taught her to reveal a core truth: You can be the mother your children need because your children were chosen for you, and you were chosen for your children.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781625391728 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | RosettaBooks |
| Publication date: | 09/05/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 112 |
| File size: | 550 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
How Do I Do This?
With his father's help, my son completed the construction of a pinewood derby car for Tiger Cubs. Late one evening, he came to me requesting that I paint a thunderbolt on the hood of the car. While he offered specifically calibrated instructions at my elbow, I brushed a yellow zigzag over the red base coat.
Why? I'm a mother.
Daily I shuttle back and forth between swim meets and basketball practice. I go to the store to get stencils for a science project display board and to the doctor's to get an X-ray for a sprained ankle, which turns out to be broken. Consequently, I become an expert in the art of applying and reapplying an air cast, all the while convincing the patient of the sensational benefits of wearing such a device when one would rather not.
Why? Because I'm a mom.
I send in applications to camp, search for stray socks, and review spelling words each Thursday night. I buy gallons of milk, brush tangles out of matted, chlorine-colored hair, and try to make myself invisible when I have to fold the laundry in the family room and my kids want to be alone with their friends. I monitor scooping out the cat litter box and emptying the dishwasher while resisting the urge to just do it myself, and read Ramona bedside.
Why? I'm a mom.
My mothering routine hasn't always been quite so varied. In the early years my responsibilities consisted largely of making sure that my babies were breathing in the middle of the night and sleeping in the middle of the day. They seemed to require no help from me to eat, eat, eat, eat all the time in between.
Throughout the stages of attachment and separation, individuation and identity formation, a certain voice has challenged me from within. I remember it first during the months when we waited to become parents. It continued its insistent whisperings during those initial late-night feedings. On into the toddler years it spoke to me. And even now, on the steps of adolescence, it demands entrance into my days.
Do you know what you're doing? Do you know how to be a mother?
In spite of the pink-and-blue-edged wonder of new parenthood, there is something terrifying about becoming a mother that lasts through all the stages and ages. When a baby is placed in our arms, we imagine that we'll miraculously know just what to do, how to nurture, how to mother. We imagine an instinctive, fitting response to our child.
Such a response did miraculously materialize the instant I saw each of my children. I could hear Eva crying as my husband, Evan, and I approached the door of the adoption agency. We'd waited for four and one-half years for our precious daughter. I was bursting to know her, love her, mother her.
Inside, we found three-week-old Eva on a table. Just a hard, folding table like you'd find in any church banquet hall. She was lying on a thin blanket, arms reaching out, feet kicking slightly, and crying while the caseworker and the foster mom talked, ignoring her need.
My heart twisted within. Someone pick up that baby! Someone hold her!
I looked from caseworker to foster mom to my husband, Evan. But the response came from within me. Well, I'm the mother. And I marched over, picked up Eva, and bonded on the spot.
Sometimes I do instinctively respond to a moment with a mothering impulse. Like when I hear a loud noise, silence, and then a wail. My feet take me to the side of my child in less than five seconds flat. Did I fly up the stairs?
In those days of struggling to prepare a meal with a toddler and a baby, I never practiced my calisthenics, "Baby on the hip, bottle just so. Toddler down there — don't step on his toe!" No. One late afternoon during the "arsenic" hour of dinner preparation time, while I was juggling and stirring and enduring a leg clamp, the phone rang. I reached for it, stuck the bottle under my chin to hold it and caught my breath in awe as I realized that God had created chins for a purpose!
Yes. An instinctive response within us motivates us maternally. But, to be honest, such a reaction surprises me. I want to be a good mom. But I've always seemed an unlikely candidate.
I grew up in a broken home. My parents were divorced when I was five. My older sister, younger brother, and I were raised by my alcoholic mother, and we saw our father only rarely.
From my mother I learned that creativity was my friend and that if I thought long and hard enough, I could think my way out of any difficulty. I gleaned a love for celebration and surprise through Christmases, birthdays, and friends. I discovered a love for reading and the blissful escape of journeying to other worlds through words. I grew in independence and in self-reliance and only occasionally turned to others for help. I became a survivor. A vigilant, fortressed queen of a kingdom over which I alone ruled.
These are the "upside" lessons of the "upside-down" reality of living with an alcoholic. I am grateful for them because they have been used to carve out the offering of character in my personhood where there might have been only deficits. But I have also come to see the negative aspects of these qualities as they can cut me off from intimacy and hide me in a warped denial of what is truly mature.
From my mother I learned to be strong and to protect myself. In her alcoholic absence, I sheltered my brother. I acquired confidence and leadership. I learned how to live. But I didn't learn how to mother.
It's understandable that in the days preceding the arrival of my daughter, I struggled with inadequacy. And perhaps it makes sense that in the nights that followed her arrival, I wondered if I'd know what to do. And most likely, it is even logical that in the months and years that have passed since my son, Ethan, came on the scene, I would still stumble over the debris of doubts in my path.
Do you know what you're doing? Do you know how to mother?
The same questions came when I first received the call from a MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) International board member who wanted me to consider becoming their first president. President of MOPS?! Ha! You must be deluded! Represent moms across the country — across the world? When I came from a broken home with the secrets behind the doors? I'm so unsure of how to mother in the first place!
It took three months of prayer and doubled-up therapy sessions for God to convince me that I was just what he wanted. I began to see all the other women just like me who were tackling the job of mothering — some with worse backgrounds. I began to notice in the eyes of others the same uncertainty I felt. As I opened up, others shared their feelings of inadequacy, their need for help. And even those who came from healthy families voiced fears of not doing it right.
In the years of serving as president of MOPS International, I've become convinced that the very deficit I'd experienced was actually the offering God would have me bring to the task.
And I've come to believe that God doesn't make mistakes. I believe that from the womb, he has known me. From the womb, he has known our children. The words of Psalm 139 are true for us and for our children.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. ... My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
(Psalm 139:13, 15-16)
God knows what he's doing. My parents were sovereignly used to make me into who God desires me to be. I believe this now, although the voice still sometimes whispers doubts to me.
I also believe that Evan and I are God's chosen parents for Eva and Ethan. He has sovereignly chosen us for them and them for us, no matter what I was or did or thought in the past.
In 2 Corinthians 12:9, the apostle Paul quotes Jesus' words, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Human weakness provides the ideal opportunity for the display of divine power. In another New Testament letter Paul admits, I can do everything through him who gives me strength (Philippians 4:13).
Do I know what I'm doing? Do you? Sometimes. But not always. And we don't have to. No one expects us to know it all, do it all, or fix it all. God takes our deficits and makes them his offerings to our children and to our world. All we have to do is let him.
CONFIDENCE BUILDERS
1. In what area do you struggle most as a mom? Why is this area such a challenge for you?
2. How can God use your deficits to actually become an offering for your children? How can he turn your weaknesses into your strengths?
3. What is your part in this process?
CHAPTER 2Am I What My Child Really Needs?
Embroidered on a pillow that once lay in my daughter's crib are words from 1 Samuel 1:27-28:
I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the LORD. For his whole life he will be given over to the LORD.
As a new parent, I can remember tracing my finger along the stitches of that pillow and wondering when I'd first mouth these words for my child, for my children.
The words belonged to a woman named Hannah, who had been childless for years. That's the Bible's sole description of Hannah: She was childless. In a day when a woman's worth was determined by her fertility, Hannah appeared to be worthless. Paired with Fertile Myrtle — Peninnah, her husband's other wife — Hannah faced her inadequacy day in and day out. Peninnah, the mother of many, paraded her children in front of Hannah, gloating over her tribe.
One year, when Hannah and her husband journeyed to the central sanctuary at Shiloh, where many Jews gathered to worship, Hannah begged God for a child in "bitterness of soul." The priest, Eli, told her that God would answer her request. And indeed, God did. After raising and weaning her son, Samuel, Hannah took him to Eli. Fulfilling her promise to God, she offered Samuel back to God.
So now I give him to the LORD. For his whole life he will be given over to the LORD (1:28).
I first met Hannah during the years when my husband, Evan, and I waited for a child through adoption. Because we had known at marriage that we would be unable to bear children naturally and were convinced that we would one day want a family, we began adoption procedures immediately. Four and a half long years later, we finally received Eva, our first child. Ethan came, unexpectedly quickly, two and a half years later through adoption as well.
In bitterness of soul, I had waited, Hannah-like, for children. While I often doubted my adequacy to mother, I was completely secure in my desire. So, when I ran across this Old Testament friend, I took her example into my heart and held it there. Her prayer became a nursery theme, embroidered on a pillow, calligraphied on a plaque.
But I had never really prayed it.
One night when Eva was almost four years old, I put her to bed in haste. I was worn out from the challenge of her incessant needs along with those of her toddler brother. Like any good mother of preschoolers, I prayed with her and kissed her good night. Then, seconds later, she was up, begging for a drink of water, for another book, for a sixteenth kiss, for more of me. But I didn't have any more of me to give.
So, I did what any good mother of preschoolers would do. I gritted my teeth and got through the moment, but not without a bit of impatience and struggle.
Back in my own room, tucked into my covers with the lights out, I cried. Will I ever be enough as a mother? Will I ruin my children because of the perennial shortage of me? Hannah's prayer echoed through my mind: So now I give her to the Lord. For her whole life she will be given over to the Lord. And for the first time, I mouthed Hannah's words as my own. Oh, God, please take Eva. I give her over to you. I trust you. But I don't trust me.
As I lay there in my inadequacy, God's response surprised me. Okay. I'll take responsibility for Eva. She is my precious child, and I love her more than you ever could. But do you really trust me with her?
Sure! I responded.
Do you trust me to oversee her schooling?
Yes.
Do you trust me to protect her health?
Of course!
Do you trust me to select her husband — or to care for her if she remains single?
Absolutely!
Well then, do you trust me to select the very best mother for her and for who I want her to become?
Good question. Did I?
With the covers pulled up tight under my chin, I came to grips with the core question of motherhood. Will I be an adequate mother for my child? For my children? Am I what they need?
God's response to me, in question form, has become my answer. There is a sovereign dimension to the creation-selection of our children for our families and of ourselves for their mothers. When God gives children to mothers, he gives them with an eye to who they can become for his glory.
We can be the mothers our children need because each of us is divinely chosen to be the mother of each child under our care. That's the truth God speaks to me in the wee hours of the night and in the stark light of day. Between the lines of the prayer embroidered on a pillow that once lay in my baby's room is a truth that has come to rule my mothering.
CONFIDENCE BUILDERS
1. Do you believe that you are the mother your child needs?
2. What are some examples from your everyday life that support this fact?
3. How does this truth change the way you think and feel about yourself as a mother?
CHAPTER 3What Do I Need to Mother Well?
Soft rustlings came from the next room. I glanced at the clock. Yep. Eva was awake. She was a predictable napper, thank goodness, and I'd enjoyed the break of the past hour with her asleep. I pushed my project aside and went to greet her.
She sat up in bed, her toddler-length hair tousled from a busy sleep. Dimples punctuated her chubby cheeks. Her puffy eyes sparkled at the mere sight of me. Twinkling back at her, I reached down with a wake-up hug. She wrestled herself free of sheets and lifted her arms, blankie in tow.
My nose informed me before my hands registered the dampness. She had wet her bed.
Instantly, the peace brought by the previous hour evaporated. Gritting my teeth against the words of criticism I wanted to unleash, I washclothed her bottom and changed her pants. I set her in front of Sesame Street, jerked the sheets off the bed, and announced I'd be back in a minute. Once in the privacy of my basement, I crammed the wet, stinky sheets in the washing machine, all the while tirading to the walls about potty-training.
First there had been the "potty-train in one day" method. That was actually kind of fun. I'd partitioned off the linoleum floor surfaces of our home, gathered a stash of children's books, mixed a myriad of juices, and set Eva running diaperless for the entire afternoon so she could "feel" her need to use the potty. We both enjoyed the serendipity of the day, and at times she was successful in connecting "the urge to go" with the potty-chair.
But the next day there were the normal accidents.
Then we resorted to the "gummy bear" reward system. In a grocery store excursion, I encouraged Eva to select her own reward for keeping her panties dry. When she chose gummy bears, I guided her hand as she dipped scoop upon scoop from the bulk-food dispenser into a plastic bag, which she then carried "all by herself" to the checkout lane. With money I provided, she proudly paid for her purchase and we left.
The plan was that every time she used the potty successfully she'd receive a gummy bear. Those first few days were filled with nonstop potty-stops. For every drop she created, I doled out a gummy bear. We stopped in stores, gas stations, restaurants, schools, and places of employment. She ate lemon, cherry, orange, lime, and pineapple bears until I feared for the condition of her teeth. Ever present in my purse was the plastic bag of bears, although at times it mushed into a mound of critters that had to be pried apart by sticky fingers. Basically, the plan worked.
But naptime and bedtime proved immune to the reward system. If Eva wasn't awake, she couldn't "feel" her need to potty, nor respond to the enticement of the waiting gummy bear.
I shoved at the balled-up sheets, forcing them down into the washing machine again. I was stripping, washing, and remaking these sheets twice a day now and had been for about two weeks. I'd had it. Grabbing the detergent box, I reached for the scoop to measure out the suds, all the while grumbling, mumbling, and stumbling out feelings.
That's when it happened. It was as if the detergent box took on a life of its own. Whirling and spinning, it flew about the basement, spilling its contents in arcs of momentum. As I watched it fly about me, I noticed it wasn't really moving on its own, but my hand was slinging it, propelling it about. I was flinging the box about the room.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Mom to Mom"
by .
Copyright © 1996 Elisa Morgan.
Excerpted by permission of Bondfire Books, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Title Page,
Copyright Page,
Introduction: Confessions of a Mother "Inferior",
1. How Do I Do This?,
2. Am I What My Child Really Needs?,
3. What Do I Need to Mother Well?,
4. How Do I Make Good Choices?,
5. How Do I Handle My Imperfections?,
6. How Does God See Me When I Fail?,
7. Do I Notice When I Do It Right?,
8. How Do I Teach My Child to Live Life Well?,
9. What If I Don't Know the Answers?,
10. When Is It Okay to Ask for Help?,
11. How Do I Show God to My Child?,
12. How Do I Love My Child Enough But Not Too Much?,
13. How Can I Tell If I'm a Good Mom?,
Afterword,