You Don't Have to be Blooming to be Growing

God, cast a vision for me in this crazy season. I'm loving these words right now from Coffee + Crumbs: Grow Your Hope with Ruth Chou Simons.

"As mothers, how can we grow our hope?"

"I think as moms we have a tendency to look at what's right in front of us. We're always attending to the next crisis. It's the tyranny of the urgent with moms, right? It is that child that's screaming, the milk that's spilled, the discipline that you need to really have the right words for but can't think of. And it's always that next big thing, where to send your kid to kindergarten, whether or not you're spending enough time nurturing their gifts, feeling mom guilt. There's all these things that we're feeling like we're always behind on. And I think one of the things that really causes us to grow in a season of motherhood, is to actually look always further and beyond, and to constantly consider that you're running a marathon and not a sprint.

For a long time, early on in motherhood, I kept thinking that I was going to arrive around the corner. I kept thinking, 'oh if I just read this book, get with the right playgroup, make the right choices, or just do it right today, train my kids to put away the dishes, tomorrow won't be that way. Or next week, I won't have to deal with this anymore.' And a few years in, I realized, no no no. This is a marathon. This is designed for me to press into the constancy of being pruned and changed in motherhood. And it's the marathon of my kids not arriving, and neither will I. And that's not to make us feel like, 'oh my goodness I'll never arrive.' But rather, the process, the progress, the in-between IS the thing. We talk about the journey is the thing. It really is, in motherhood. And I think sometimes we wish away that process and that season... thinking that if we just narrow on these few things and figure it out, then we will arrive and we can save ourselves some of that discomfort and this chafing of motherhood, the chafing of working with young ones who can't tie their own shoes and cry about everything. Really, that IS the content of your life. That is the very thing that you get to do right now, and influence, and build up. And so, I think we, as moms, there's a reason women in their 60s and 70s say, 'oh if you only knew how fast it goes,' and sometimes it's wonderful and sometimes it's annoying. I think that women who are older forget, and sometimes I forget as well, which is why I try to speak in a way that never undermines another season. But the reality is that we forget so easily that when you're in the trenches, you kind of don't know where you're heading. You don't really know exactly what it's going to be. And I know that older women are hoping to encourage that, but sometimes it's not just a picture you hold up. Sometimes it's actually holding that woman's hand and walking her out through the trenches.... You don't have to have the same circumstances to be going through the same life lessons."