To the Momma of Little Ones

A few weeks ago, my son started stuttering. It came on sudden, so sudden I may have panicked and thought there was something seriously wrong and called the doctor. As it turns out, stutters are quite common at Jed’s age. It’s even common that they appear suddenly.  There is nothing wrong with my boy, it’s just a matter of his mind moving faster than his mouth can.

Here’s the thing about stutters. The best way to talk to my son is slow and clear (not obnoxiously slow, perhaps just slower this Californian tends to speak). The best way to deal with the stutter is to allow him to take his time to say what he wants to say, to complete his own thought himself. To hurry his words is to hurt him. To apply too much pressure to him to complete his words is to risk a lifetime of difficulty. To complete his thoughts for him is to stunt his growth.

Is it okay to admit that there are times when it takes everything in me to not rush him to the point of what he’s trying to say? Sometimes it’s hard to be slow, to stop and listen, and to listen well.

But the hurrying hurts. It pressures and it crushes. It binds up in fear. It lies and tells us accomplishments make us matter, make us enough. Hurry misses what is right in front of us. Hurry denies us the pleasure of the gifts of today. Hurry places greater value on the next thing rather than the now thing.

And that’s the thing about these small years, is it not?

The days are long and the work mundane. We do things like sit under children, like clean messes while another one is being made, like brave ten minutes of finger painting for a half-hour of clean up, like try to be healthy and take walks… while pushing a stroller, hollering at the one kid riding off down the street, and reminding the three year old to not pick someone else’s flowers or walk out in the street or to leave the roly-poly alone and to keep walking before sister gets too far ahead… (basically you move REALLY slowly through the neighborhood).

It’s slow work. It seems like small work.

I think it’s pretty normal to feel restless, to want to hurry it, hurry our kids through it, to feel like maybe you aren’t enough and maybe you need something else to show for who you are. Maybe it even feels like some of you is buried underneath the cheerio messes, the bottom-wiping, and the clothes-folding. Maybe you feel like your life is on hold and you wonder if it will ever move forward again.

I’ve mentioned this Indian proverb before: Children tie the feet of their mother.

And they do. And if you try to run through this season…try to do more than you are appointed to do in this season, you will feel yourself tearing against the taut rope of a momma’s and a child’s love, you will trip, you might even fall, and maybe even crush those little ones at your feet.

The best way to walk, and perhaps it’s the most unnatural way for a post-bra-burning western woman… Walk Slowly.

I think it’s important to recognize the season through which you are walking. I think it’s important to know that God works in seasons, and these small years… it is a season of seed planting.

You are doing the grueling work of tilling the hard ground of strong wills, of mine-mine-mine and me-me-me, and of temper-tantrums in public places.

You are planting the seeds of God’s love, self-worth, and hard-work. You are planting seeds in your kids that will one day bear fruit. And what you do now and how you do it… matters.

You are surrendering some of the dreams in your heart to the soil to lie dormant for a season, trusting that one day God will resurrect them from the ground.

I think it’s needful to be able to say with absolute certainty, “I am a mom” and to be able to stick a period at the end of the sentence. For those four words to reverberate inside of you with truth, that yes, there is absolutely more to you than being a mom, but being a mom is glorious and important and along with a handful of other things, what you are called to do.

I think there is something hard but freeing about walking slowly, realizing so many things can and will wait, and embracing with fullness this season.

We are moms. And right now, that’s enough.

By Grace,

Amanda Conquers


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