Strength for the Season of Tweeny Teens

I am not that great at motherhood.

I don’t say this to be self-deprecating.   I am fourteen years into this vocation, one which has challenged and rewarded me, brought me to my knees before God, both in desperation and in awe.   The magnitude of motherhood is such that those paradoxes can occur in the same moment.

And I don’t have all that I need to get this done.

I have passed through a season of diapers and endless days.   The kids were everywhere and clamoring for touch, kissed owies, and bedtimes stories.  Just when I believed those long hours would go on forever, they have disappeared, and I find myself surrounded by children---three tweeny-teens and one six-year-old who believes his is 10---who largely do not want to be kissed, guided, loved.   They don’t seem to acknowledge that I know anything.   In fact, many days, I believe it is their mission to contradict everything I say.

And so, just as I became better at tinies, having received a modicum of patience and growth, the game has changed.

And I can’t do this alone.

Yesterday my tweeny-teens were a ridiculous rompus, tearing one another down and not participating very well in my mandated moment to give thanks at dinner.   We tried to go to the library, and our once-treasured place of discovery became another battleground.   I picked apart book selections that were inferior to my kids’ abilities.   I didn’t want them glued to screens.   When they played with the toys in the little kid area, they were obnoxious.   Where is a place, I wondered, where my kids can get along?  Do they have to be separated to function well? 

Do I have what it takes to get this job done?

The answer is no.   I do not have what it takes to do this with grace and love well.   I am not equipped to be a mother to all these different personalities, needs, limits, capacities.  But I am.  God trusted me to do this with Him.

And so, tonight, when my tweeny-teens bound out of the school and clamor to get away from me and into the next moment of fun, I will try again---with the Lord---to strive for patience and creativity and all that I have to bring my children love, guidance, faith.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.