Glamorous Motherhood

   At 5:56pm my little family was in our not-totally-clean-but-passably-clean kitchen. My husband stands at the stove cooking chicken, our baby is army crawling around on the floor with his toys, and I am making coffee- because, you know, we're parents. And being parents means we drink coffee anytime we actually need to be around people, and/or capable of coherent speech, and/or in an upright position. It was relatively peaceful, or at least relatively quiet. And then I looked at the clock.

  It is always a bad idea to look at the clock. I think of clocks much like a Glade air freshener that automatically releases scent when you walk in a room, except clocks automatically release cortisol into my bloodstream when I look directly at them.

  "It's four minutes to six."

  These were the words that sprang us all into action- Arthur heading out to church, I packing the diaper bag with baby food and grabbing a sweatshirt, Judah utilizing the 47 seconds I was gone to scoot across the room and put a piece of lint in his mouth.

  "We don't eat pieces of fuzz that we find on the floor," I say, expertly sweeping my finger through his mouth and scooping out the fuzz. Yes, I did say expertly. There are many things I am not good at, but I have YEARS of experience snatching inedible things from the mouths of children. It's one of the abilities listed on my resume.

  The tasks continued: Check the chicken, pour the coffee, wonder if I should go look for Arthur's good travel mug or just use the spare, decide to use the spare, check the chicken again, check the rice, put a second bowl of baby food in the diaper bag in case my monster baby is especially hungry.

  I grab a clean-looking pair of pajamas for Judah and proceed to dress him on the kitchen floor, because all the world's a changing table. It is then that I noticed his black onesie is no longer black, but speckled with all of the stuff I would have swept up if I'd swept the kitchen anytime recently. Oops. I thank God that the cleanliness of my house does not effect my salvation as I zip up Judah's pajamas. He rolls away, chasing down a rubber snake intended for children years older than himself. Is it BPA free? I have no idea. Should I let him chew on it? Eh. Does he chew on it? Yes, he does.

  While my eight-month-old the size of an eighteen-month-old is chewing on a toy designed for an eight-year-old, I am cramming a container full of my dinner (chicken and rice, as you may have figured out) into my massive diaper bag.

  I suit up: Diaper bag over my shoulder, baby slung across my hip, Mr. Rabbit and blanket slung across my baby, two travel mugs of hot coffee held carefully in my hand as Judah pats them happily, all of which leaves a free hand with which to turn off lights and lock the door on my way out.

  We've done it. Judah is buckled into his carseat with minimal complaining ("I was JUST IN HERE, Mama! What the heck!"...except in baby, not English) and we are on our way! I'd gotten us out the door in fifteen minutes. I start singing a worship song thinking it would aid my liver in ridding my body of that wave of aforementioned cortisol. Which it does, until I see the potential kidnapping scene.

  The potential kidnapping scene is just a stroller abandoned on the sidewalk, but it sends me into a dramatic train of what-if's and amateur investigation, which looks a lot like circling back and asking the lady on the other side of the street if it is her stroller. It is. The crisis having been solved, I go merrily (more or less) on my way.

  Then I hear Judah give a tired sigh. I look at the clock, give a tired sigh of my own, and make a u-turn. He's already missed his long nap for the day. He is hungry. The potential kidnapping scene crisis has mysteriously managed to make us late for Life Group, and Judah will start crying for bed in thirty minutes anyways. Some nights, I decide, it's not worth it. Some nights you just need to let your baby go to sleep in his own bed and realize that it's ok if you don't show up for every group every week.

  So we go home. I pull into the parking spot and see a UPS notification on our front door, because apparently the UPS guy timed his delivery just-so and successfully showed up during the fifteen minutes that I wasn't home. The notice says that today is Thursday and this was his second attempt to deliver the package, both of which are straight-up lies, but the slip of paper doesn't care what I have to say.

  Judah and I eat dinner together, during which he decides to abandon his former mealtime manners and instead carefully pluck bits of food from his mouth, which he smears on his hand on sleeves. I let him. He cried and struggled when I washed him up, destroying all the hard work he'd put into the mess, but he got over it as soon as I told him he could go to bed. It's all he's really wanted all day, after all- to sleep in his own bed. At last, after a day of driving and visiting family and short-lived attempts to leave the house, I carry my little man up to his room.

  He cuddles in with Mr. Rabbit and pulls his blankets up over his face, which he does when he's really tired. I kiss his forehead and tell him that I love him. This moment- smoothing my baby's hair as he settles in for the night- is worth the moment when I felt like a failure for not being the supermom who shows up at every item on the calendar, freshly-showered and wearing lipstick. That's not me. Every once in a while I have an exceptionally great day and that is me, but really, most of the time, that's just NOT me.

  I think it's great that some moms can manage that. I do believe in the unicorn of moms, who has a spotless home and a bright-white smile and doesn't need coffee to survive, but I am not her. And that is ok. Tonight I am the mom who mashes up rice, beans, and corn with a fork and lets her kid engrain it into the fabric of his pajamas. Tomorrow maybe I'll be high-heeled-boots mom. Today I was Converse-that-look-like-they-were-chewed-by-a-dog mom. And that really is ok.

  Real life and real motherhood are not always glamorous. But God is always good. His grace is always sufficient. His joy is always pure. His strength is always enough. He is always bigger than the worst of days and better than the best of days.

  He is all I need.