They didn’t want to listen to me, broke a lot of rules, got into a lot of things they shouldn’t have, hurt each other, hurt me, and made the house an ongoing mess.
When I sat down to build Legos and blocks with them, I tried to build something creative and interesting, but could never get very far before they would knock it all down. They took total pleasure in this. I think this is funny now, but at the time it was pretty frustrating.
Symbolically, I wanted to build things up, develop, achieve, and grow. And they wanted to knock things down, experiment, play, and test boundaries.
I was always cleaning up the spaghetti and green beans that they threw on the floor, changing explosive poopy diapers, trying to identify the source of their discomfort and crying (ear infections, constipation, diarrhea, flu, colic, fevers, etc.), and searching for ways to keep us all educated, entertained, and spiritually fed during the long days at home with no car. We only had one, and my husband drove it to work every day.
And in regard to my mind…I couldn’t stand Barney. Sesame Street was okay. I eked some drops of intelligence from Reading Rainbow that prevented my mind from wasting away into literally nothing.
In conclusion (as my daughter Laura would say), I had a good reason for feeling impatient and angry. Motherhood was a heavy burden. The sacrifice was really intense yet extremely boring, and I couldn’t seem to find much relief from it.
So, after I responded to situations by yelling or tossing a boy onto his bed in frustration, I wanted to experience comfort and understanding for what I was going through. Instead, I felt awful feelings inside of me. And I felt like a total failure. I could not stop my boys from misbehaving and making messes and neither could I stop myself from getting upset about it.
I felt trapped in this never-ending cycle of failures.
At the time, I could not explain what was happening, let alone why. I rarely wrote in my journal throughout these years, but when I did it was to reach for someone to save me during some of my most intense emotional periods.
Somebody save me
I don't care how you do it, just save, save
C'mon, I'm waiting for you
Listen: Save Me by Remy Zero
(This song was used for the Smallville Television series)
I noted in my journal that I was reading my scriptures every day and praying. I also read to the boys from the scripture readers for kids and sang hymns with them. And I was going to church every Sunday. I was doing everything I knew to keep God’s commandments, but apparently, all of this was not enough. I ended those journal entries with the conclusion that I did not like myself and sometimes even confessed in Toxic Shame that I didn’t like motherhood either.
I feel my wings
Have broken in your hands
I feel the words unspoken inside
When they pull you under
And I will give you anything you want, oh
When I look back on this time period and other events throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, I recognize that I was in a type of bondage that I did not know how to get out of. Spiritually, I was experiencing anxiety and depression.
I see the world has folded in your heart
I feel the waves crash down inside
And they pull me under
And I would give you anything you want, oh
You were all I wanted
And all my dreams are fallen down
Crawlin’ around and around…
Out of all the years I have lived since this time and all the trials I have gone through, these early motherhood years were the hardest. I mean, I have had harder trials, but I had the strength and the relationship with the Lord to bear them. During these early years, even though I was reading my scriptures and praying I hadn’t yet developed a close enough relationship with him. And so, it was this combination of my distance from him, subsequent weakness, and the intense long-term sacrifice that kicked my butt.
There is an even deeper reason for why this failure hurt me so badly. Before I even met my husband, I had made a sacred covenant with God in which I told him I was ready for the sacrifice that motherhood required of me and I was willing to stay home with my kids. I was determined to be there for them and not leave them alone. This meant everything to me and I wanted so badly to be true to this commitment to God and to my kids. And I thought this determination would be enough to succeed. It wasn’t.
Somebody Save Me!
In 1999, I remember getting to a low point and asking my husband for a priesthood blessing. I had been pleading with God for years in my prayers to “please, help me be a better mother.” In the blessing, I was promised that because I had been constantly asking him for this for so long, he would give it to me. Later, I would understand better why he put it like that. It became an opportunity cost to some of my other relationships.
Soon after this blessing, I was prompted to learn about nutrition and exercise balance. For the next five years, I journeyed along this pathway and I found greater healing, strength, and joy. The first blog post that I ever wrote was about this part of my journey: Anxiety & Depression
But by 2006, I was still struggling with my role as a mother. Some things had settled down. I had read a lot of parenting books. I had learned how to eat and exercise in balance (as mentioned in the Anxiety & Depression blog post). I had more time to develop my personal talents. The kids were a little older and in school. We lived in a large house on a couple acres of land and had more money to spend on toys, sports, talents, activities, travel, etc. With experience, I had improved my parenting skills, but I still was not there yet.
Inside me, I was still crying out:
Somebody save me
Let your warm hands break right through
And save me
As you may remember from my previous posts, during this same time I was studying semantics. I had begun to realize that I could figure out whatever I wanted to figure out. I just turned my eyes on it, studied it with the techniques the Lord was teaching me and could see it. And when I applied what I was learning to my life, it solved the problems.
I turned my focus on parenting. I knew that much of my salvation had to do with my getting this parenting role down and doing right by these four beautiful children that God had entrusted me with. I could not pass on what was passed on to me. I had to somehow stop it. I wanted this so badly. My attitude was:
I don’t care how you do it, just stay, stay
I was willing to do whatever it took. Just show me how… and stay with me.
What does it mean to be saved?
I had very little understanding of what was meant by being saved before I looked at it. It was one of those words I just glossed over when reading because I had seen it so many times. And in my earlier years, I didn’t really like to talk about being saved because the Holy Rollers that used the term made it sound super weird. They seemed to hype it up and define it in a way that did not resonate with me. And then I heard other people making fun of this Holy Roller presentation of God’s grace. But I would not make fun of God or his grace.
In my studies and through the last sixteen years of training with the Lord, I have come to understand what the words Saved and Salvation mean:
Sustainable Joy
As a Child (of my parents and of God), I am loved, nourished, evaluated, and disciplined within the Northern Threshold.
As a Parent, I love, nourish, evaluate, and discipline my children within the Northern Threshold - in alignment with God's will.
As a Wife, I am balanced with my husband within the Northern Threshold (see my Soulmates Marriage blog).
As a member of my Community, I love, nourish, and look for the good in others, empathetically forgiving, while objectively working together to resolve what’s not working
It sounds so simple. And it is. But because of the Fall, agency, adversity, Satan, and the subsequent imbalanced incompatible relationships and situations that complicate everything, the solution also gets a little more detailed.
Just stay, stay
C’mon, I’m still waiting for you.
If you are struggling with parenting, I am going to share how the Lord saved me in this role in the next few posts.
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