In all, 13.7 million U.S. households with children under age 18 now include mothers who are the main breadwinners. Of those, 5.1 million, or 37 percent, are married, while 8.6 million, or 63 percent, are single.
~Pew Research Study via Huffington Post
Like it or not, the landscape in America has shifted and much of the weight of providing for their people is now carried by moms. Surely we would lighten the load if we could.
Maybe we could start with the guilt we heap on them?
No one can understand the guilt we feel as a working mom that carts their kid off Mon thru Fri. I pray for Friday to come quick and for Sundays to never end.
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I think that no matter our choice, we moms feel guilty. I feel guilty for staying home and watching the bills just barely get paid each month. But when I begin taking steps towards returning to the workforce I … find myself in a constant battle.
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I’ve struggled through so many why’s and so much guilt. This is the first time I’ve read a Christian post that doesn’t condemn me for having to work or suggest that I could do better by being a stay-at-home mom. Thank you so much for writing this; it’s a timely, encouraging word for this tired mama.
{Comments left on my post Grace for the Working Mother and her Guilt}.
There’s a white house on Edsall street that makes me sad every time I drive by it.
It is filled with toys and beautiful learning centers and lots of swings and plastic cars. But a part of me aches every time we drive past it.
I ache with two years of remembered drop-offs at that house.
I’ve always worked full time. Sometimes from home, mostly at an office, and more recently from home again. But for two years I commuted two hours every morning and every aching evening, risking tickets in the high occupancy lane to make it home by 6 to that white house where my baby boy waited for me.
His big brother was at the preschool down the road. But Micah, he was too young for real school and instead spent his days in a home that wasn’t mine.
He cried at drop off every, single day. So did I.
I cried tears and frustration and guilt.
I raged in the midnight hours at the God who didn’t provide a different income and who couldn’t possibly understand how much I loved my kids let alone love them as much as I did.
I didn’t trust Him.
That’s the flat truth.
I didn’t trust the God who gave me that boy to watch over him while I was gone.
And it was a relief to say it out loud, head leaning defeated against the wall behind my bed. “Help me God, because I don’t know how to trust you with my son.”
And here’s the thing – there was no lightning, no darkening of the sky, no judgment from on high.
Instead in the quiet dark of listening to baby breathing – the slow in and out of innocence – I felt a deep spirit of peace wrap itself around me and just hold me. There. Hold me and rock me and understand.
It was OK that I was angry.
It was OK that I was scared.
It was OK that I was all burnt out on the insides from worrying about paying bills and making ends meet and juggling a job I wasn’t passionate about and incapable of handing that baby boy over to God.
Instead He picked us both up – and while I held Micah, I felt the Spirit hold me.
So tender. This love that first loved us. This never-giving-up, always-chasing love that isn’t afraid of all the resentment a mother can pack into two clenched fists.
This lavish love that loves us first.
Not because of our kids or our marriages or our tidy houses or our all-caught-up-on-the-laundry days.
Not because we stay home with our kids and not because we go to work.
This is a love that loves because it can’t not.
“This is real love— not that we loved God, but that he loved us.” This love that teaches us how to love, “because he loved us first.”
This love that is so much like a mother’s.
And there are voices that yell loud that we’re doing it wrong, doing them wrong, doing it backwards by driving to work every day with our kids left behind. Our own voice the loudest in that choir of accusation and guilt.
Listen to me – you brave women who get up early to provide for your families – soldier on.
You are beloved and your courage seeps out of your actions.
And I know it hurts and I know there are days you doubt your story will ever be different and I know also that you can find passion and conviction in your work and sometimes that worries you even more.
But I am convinced that nothing can separate us or our children from the love of a God who moved into the neighborhood so that He could be with us. God with us. In all our every day, ordinary extraordinary.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,
neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow
—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
~Romans 8: 38-39.
Not the critics or the mounting bills.
Not the commute through grinding gridlock, not the passing Sunday comments that quietly criticize, not the emails that sting or the mom’s groups that only meet on weekday mornings.
Not the Daycare conflicts, the biting phases or the temper tantrums. Not the fear of missing out.
Not the hours missed or the play dates postponed. Not the food prepared and then eaten in our absence.
Not the crackly static of a nagging voice that whispers doubt.
Not the good-byes and not the drop-offs and not the tears and not the hours that add up.
Not the mom guilt.
Not the names we call ourselves and not the ways we berate.
Not the choices we make and not the years we must wait.
Nothing. Nothing can separate us from the wild, radically gracious, permanently-on-our side love of the God who gifted us these children as well as the means to provide for them.
He doesn’t play favorites because you are already His favorite.
You and you and also you.
And your children with you.
Read more of my motherhood journey in my book, Surprised by Motherhood: Everything I Never Expected About Being a Mom.Need another reminder that you are braver than you know because you mother – no matter where or how you work – watch this one.
