A Mom’s Confession

This post has been making lazy circles in my mind for a few weeks now and I am still not sure I have my thoughts on the subject completely nailed down yet so give me a little grace while I figure it out here.

All of my life I have been a glass half empty kind of person, hence this blog being called It Ain’t All Rainbows.  For years my family, teachers, friends, spiritual leaders, and co-workers have teased, chastised, scolded and rolled their eyes at my pessimistic and self proclaimed “realistic” vantage point of this life.  It is no lie that it has taken me decades to become comfortable in this skin God has given me.  I have learned over the years that God created this black and white, skeptical side to me for a purpose and I have made great strides to bear this character trait with grace and love.  I have learned to temper my words with love and patience and am always in the process of attempting to see things from the lighter side of life before I start spewing words that will be perceived as discontent or bitter or to be displaying a general lack of faith or belief on my part.  Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail…I fail a lot.

I say all of this to state that lately I have been a little peeved at how the current trend on this great World Wide Web (particularly that of the parenting blogging world) is to make these startling revelations that parenting ain’t all its cracked up to be.  You can now find post after post of exhausted and bewildered parents now throwing out into the great void of the Internet that they don’t always love being a parent (gasp!), that parenting is hard (what?!) and that sometimes they just want to curl into a ball and cry over how worn out they are.  Now being someone who has spent their entire life being entirely too comfortable with expressing my every unhappiness about life, I feel a little bit slighted at the sudden popularity of this so called “honesty” being spread on the realities of parenthood.  This is obviously my prideful side rearing its lovely head that I roll my eyes and think, “Great.  Now its cool to be “honest” about this stuff.  Stop encroaching on my turf, normally sunny side up people.”  But as I have taken a closer look at this new honesty trend in parenting I was suddenly hit by something else; a thought that had never really hit me before.  One day Levi might read this.

Now in my mind, its the year 2027 and Levi is 16 years old. Its super cool in the future and the Internet as we know it currently is way vintage and only available on tiny laser discs that you can insert into your watch face and read on the display that pops out in front of your face.  Kind of like microfiche but way way cooler.  So Levi stumbles upon his mom’s blog when she was younger and slightly hipper and just starting out on this road that is parenting and he begins to read about my early days as a mom.  He reads about me complaining about teething and the days that he refused to nap or eat.  He scans over to the Facebook archives and sees post after post about how he threw a massive temper tantrum over a lack of yogurt and how much I was really looking forward to a date night with his dad.  He stumbles onto my Instagram feed and finds all sorts of adorable pictures from his toddler years along with the various pictures of messes he had created and the many cocktails I posted claiming I just needed a break.  And as he peruses this “honest” portrayal of my life in his early years I can’t help but wonder if he will wonder if he was really that bad.  Despite the fact that I tell him that I love him multiple times a day, I wonder what my social media footprint will say to him.

So in light of that let me proclaim this for all the world of the Internet to see (and maybe one day the boy who inspired this blog):  Levi, I am crazy about you.  You constantly blow me and your dad away.  We are amazed at how much love we have for you.  Even more amazed that one second, we are truly considering putting you into a steel box and the very next second we are overcome by your laughter or your smile or your overall cuteness and fun loving spirit.  You have changed our lives in a way we never thought possible and while that has involved sleepless nights and dirty exploding diapers and far far too much spit up when you were an infant, the “honest” truth is that we are so honored to be your parents and to be responsible for helping you grow into a kind, loving and godly kind of man.  I love you.

And for the rest of you faithful readers (mainly my grandma.  Hi, grandma.  Thanks for reading this and bumping my numbers a bit) let me leave you with this story:  I have been asked a LOT lately if now that Levi is approaching 2 if I will be returning to work.  Its a good question and honestly, I have no idea.  Its a post for another time, the debate between stay and home mom and working mom.  But recently someone asked me what it was exactly I would want to do if I were to go back to work.  I told them I wasn’t really sure.  I told them I had never taken jobs out of a desire to have a career.  I had always taken jobs that I believed in.  I had taken jobs that no one else would ever want to do, especially for the amount of money I was paid to do them, and I had loved each job fiercely!  And then I realized, maybe I am more cut out for this motherhood thing than I thought.  Its a job that no one else would ever choose to do and pays absolutely nothing and I love it fiercely.  I can’t imagine anyone else being Levi’s mom.  And that’s the “honest” truth.