Extra Ordinary
The great failing of our era is my generation’s refusal to accept the “ordinary”. We are hell bent on being different, “living dreams”; redefining normal as if it were something unique to each person, let alone each household. I feel like society is just getting weirder and weirder and we all just accept that, celebrate it even. Sometimes we even fight for it.
We lack the ability to just be; in our day to day, working, living, parenting. We must get stirred up, have this deep-seated discontentment about where we are versus where we should be. Church must be entertaining and sensational. We have to manufacture some sort of emotion to worship instead of the act of worship creating a better relationship with God.
School needs to keep up with the attention deficit of our screen loving children. We pander to them, we study behavior, read parenting books and don’t expect any more from them than what is scientific baseline. Meanwhile we miss so much of who that child is because we are catering to research and books rather then that individual child.
Perhaps the reason for this is the fact that most of my generation grew up reading books, playing video games, enjoying a flood of technological advancements and conveniences, watching movies and having the idle time to be entertained rather than struggle to survive.
We are not a generation of a great depression or of World War; we didn’t experience the fight for civil rights first hand. We learned about these things second hand, leaving us to merely imagine what they were like and often to romanticize them.
I have spoken and written many times about how being a mother, parenting my 3 kids has brought me so much closer to knowing God than I had ever dreamed. Sometimes when I say this I’m sure it falls upon imaginative ears, received as sort of a dreamy, far off, fanciful understanding of who God is that I experience in retrospect. As if this is something only for “other” people, for “special” people; for mothers who are deserving of Grace or women who have raised their children and now that they’re grown they have pristine hindsight. No one is deserving of Grace, first of all. To the Momma caught up in her own doubts and misgivings, thinking you are in a constant struggle until something gives way or your kids graduate, I’m telling you, I have witnessed otherwise.
I didn't have a roadmap for parental Godliness. I grew up with zero understanding, other than pleasant memories, of what I should be like as a parent let alone a God fearing, God believing mother and wife. I didn’t know how to handle the tough stuff based on example. That may have been due to my relationship with my parents or my own ineptitude but the fact remains that I was absolutely clueless. Maybe all parents are and it’s always learn as you go.
My first son was born in June of 2008. He’s nine….NINE!! My first peek at what my relationship with God looked like, God as a father and a parent was evident in my newborn son. He didn’t understand Jack-diddly-squat other than who his momma was and yet I had this immense, built in desire to protect him, to show him the deep and enduring love that was natural and instinctive.
He cried when I bathed him and he cried when I changed his diaper. These were all necessary things; very basic. He’d cry a deep-seated cry that reached into my soul with a grip like a vice and questioned the value of my being. His little cries heightened my anxiety and squeezed my heart and measured even that vital organ up against the needs of this brand new human being; my own baby that had passed through my body and changed my life forever.
All the scriptures, describing God as my Father, had new meaning. Now I realized that they didn’t mean MY FATHER; our relationship so flawed. He meant A FATHER, THE FATHER. I understood this so much more as Bryce, my oldest, became a toddler and beyond. He didn’t understand the “why” when I told him to do something, usually for his safety and well-being and often he fought it. When he trusted me, and followed instruction he was safe; protected and if I may stretch a little for the sake of this blog, enlightened. He is a child and has a child-like understanding of how things should be. Some things he will not grasp until he is an adult with children of his own.
Now as a 9-year-old, he pushes in different ways, having a novel and naïve understanding of the ways things should work and as he experiments and sometimes loses self-control we find ourselves with the same question when he was 2; “Do you trust me? Then do what I say, even if you might not understand.”
This is how I am as God’s child. There is so much I don’t understand and when I don’t I want to fight it. My Faith is strengthened when I obey and trust.
No matter how you thought about it, calculated it, approached it with reason, Debbie Mosely was never enough. She was never enough of a person, enough of a spiritual guide or nurturer to hold the responsibility of one person, let alone three on her physically bulky but often spiritually weak shoulders. I had always loved kids and when asked when I was young what I wanted to be when I grew up the answer was always, “A Mommy”. Although I’ve been a lifeguard, a swim teacher, a dance teacher, a receptionist, a day care teacher, a brokerage account customer service rep, an office manager for a concrete pumping company, a nurse (the closest profession that in some way captures any gifts God gave me for a good purpose) ……I’ve always been me. It was in none of these other endeavors, some of which I involved myself in for survival and some based on interest in my God given talents, whatever those may be, that I came to know or love God better. He gave me the amazing gift of motherhood, knowing full well I would lean on Him at every turn.
You might say that being a mother, and now one that stays home and homeschools her kids is rather dull. Lots of people are parents, especially out in suburbia, Texas. Sometimes I see myself like that too and being part of this crazy generation full of factory made emotion and people fighting for silly things because they’ve never had to fight for anything real makes it a little worse sometimes. It warps my perspective.
The thing is, though that God told us to do everything as if we were doing it for Him and not for human masters. I cannot speak for my entire generation but in general, we’re very, very bad at normal. We’re terrible at working hard on one thing, putting in the time and work to do it like we’re doing it for God. We get bored. If it’s not romantic, or exciting, or glamourous; if it doesn’t look like the magazine or the image in our heads that is ALWAYS heavily influenced by this crazy social media world around us then we want to give up.
When we grew up we wanted to be superheroes, millionaires, Barbie and most of us grew up easy. These days we don’t have to work for anything. We can literally ask our cell phones to do things FOR US. Yet still, we are bored. If we find ourselves with a regular job or worse, a traditional role like a stay at home mom (gasp!) it’s hard to be at peace.
I’m telling you it’s ok to be “ordinary”. It is in the ordinary moments, where we don’t seek out excitement or gratification that we can hear God speak the loudest sometimes.
Putting the kids to bed should be one of my favorite things at a mother but I must say it’s my least favorite time of the day. I always pictured reading at bedtime and snuggles and goodnight kisses. There’s some of that, but there’s mostly fighting. Fighting amongst siblings and me fighting them to get in and stay in their dang beds. It’s not what I pictured and it’s hard. It downright stinks some nights. However, once I get past the hard parts I see God in their sleeping faces, at rest and dreaming innocent dreams. If it weren’t for this I’d probably start drinking rum like a pirate.
I’m always behind on the laundry. I even bring it up too often in normal conversation as if anyone cares that I secretly wish one day everyone would just wear their swimsuit so I could get caught up. Think about what a privilege it is, though to be trusted with the clothing for 4 people. To have clothes, blankets, sock and underwear.
I have been vomited on, urinated on, pooped on, bled on amongst many other disgusting experiences and I’m not including what I’ve dealt with as a nurse. Sometimes this normal, traditional role seems boring. This thing is, though it’s totally not. What an amazing gift it is to help 3 sweet little souls find who God made them to be, to be the person who washes their underwear, buys their shoes, teaches them to read. How amazing is it that when I’m not so distracted and waiting for the next emotional highlight I realize I’m exactly where I am supposed to be?
It’s hard work and it’s tedious sometimes. Sometimes it’s the opposite, right now everyone is screaming at each other upstairs and I’m ignoring it for as long as I can.
We’re not all cracked up to be super stars. Not in worldly terms. We are God’s, though. When we gradually, thoroughly, carefully, prayerfully do the little stuff, it matters. We all need to tend our gardens well and see what God will grow. In my case it’s growing 3 amazing little people and a marriage built and grown in God’s love and Grace.
