If you’re visiting from Glennon’s place over at Momastery today – welcome. I’m a mom of three kids and me and my good man make our home under the cherry blossoms just outside of Washington, D.C. But my heart is buried under a Jacaranda tree in Pretoria, South Africa. I write here about life lived in between – countries, kids and the daily, holy chaos of raising them.
I think that trying to survive motherhood while under the impression that other mothers somehow have it all together is dreadfully discouraging. So on this blog I do my best not to dress up motherhood. I try to tell it straight. Like how my daughter has cracked my heart right open. Or how every tired mom might need to recite this reminder before breakfast. And that you’re mighty because you mother. Especially on the days you don’t feel like it. And if you subscribe by email for my updates – see the box there in the margin? – I’ll happily send you a copy of my {free} eBook The Cheerleader for Tired Moms.
For those of you who are new around here, if there’s one thing I’d like to let you in on, it’s this:
I was the girl who swore she’d never end up anyone’s cliche — barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. Which is interesting since we currently have three kids, a hamster and a back yard where toys go to die.
I grew up in South Africa, where the streets turn Jacaranda purple in October and we take our tea hot with milk and sugar, and I hadn’t turned 18 yet when I swore I didn’t plan to be anyone’s mother.
It was after my mom had been in hospital for about nine months and the pastor’s son was over and caught me trying to figure out how to cook dinner for my kid brothers. I was barefoot. And in the kitchen.
I remember how the late afternoon sunshine was coming in at the window and I had my mom’s wooden cutting board out – the one with the pot burns blackened into its surface. We’d been living on takeout, dad was burned out from the hourly evening commutes to the hospital, and that night I was chopping onions to get a real meal started instead.
But William laughed at me and I promised myself I’d grow up to do something big and brave and important.
For a while I did.
After my mom died. After I went to college. After I graduated law school. After I told the boy I was in love with that I needed him to marry me and not my ability to have kids. And he did. There was a while when I felt significant in all the ways that I thought were the opposite of helping someone finish his homework or someone else root through the piles of laundry for clean undies.
I was a legal specialist in Ukraine and we fought human trafficking with gritted teeth and bared hearts and our guts tied up in knots. It was awful and incredible and necessary and there are things I will always wish I could un-see.
That’s the part I need you to know because it’s what makes being a mother to three kids so surprising to me.
I turned 30 in Ukraine. And by the time I turned 31 we would be back living in South Africa after a decade away. And I would give birth to our first born three days later.
Here’s what I learned in between.
Here’s what I want you to hear. Especially you, if you’re wondering how life turned out like this, if you feel lost in your own story and looking for a way out.
If you’re up to your eyeballs in kids and under the weather and desperate for the laundry to cut you some slack.
If you’re gasping for breath and wrestling worries and bills and sweating the end of year report cards.
If you can’t bear to come up with one more way to cook chicken.
……then click over here won’t you? To keep reading with me.
Thank you for your transparency Lisa-Jo. It’s a beautiful thing to have known you at different points in your journey. God is using you in mighty way and I am so thankful for the ways you have encourage me.
Thanks Kristen. And guess who just visited us in DC and we were talking about you – Nicole Pedrotty! :) Love this small world…
I love your writing and it reflects so well on how I feel about motherhood, too. Have a great summer with the kids! And good luck finding another way to eat chicken…
tears flowed as I read this, guess I didn’t realize how ‘tired’ I was…thank you, sister.
So needed this today!!! Thank you for opening your heart and writing what so many of us feel and can’t express.
I can’t even believe that I just read exactly what I needed to hear today. I’ve been juggling so much and there are so many balls on the floor and I’m just plain tired. My soul just sang reading these words
Wow, Lisa-Jo, we have such similar stories! I too am a born and bred South African: Pretoria high school for girls, law degree, thought I was destined for fighting against Injustice type… Who now finds myself as a stay at home mom in California with three kids, a minivan and a mountain of laundry. The daily search for significance is so very pressing… And your words are so very encouraging. I am DEVOURING your oh so lekker blog :-)
Thank you for this! I keep reading it over and over, and I think, “Yes, yes, yes.” I, too, never wanted to be a mother. I didn’t want to marry, either, and I’ve done both, and I’ve been completely and utterly surprised by joy in both. This life, as messy and broken as it is, is so beautiful. I wouldn’t trade it for the cleanest downtown loft or the most exciting travel schedule or any of those other things I thought I wanted. Not for a minute.
Lisa – I understand you also work for DaySpring and I’m wondering if any of my photos would speak to your audience? http://www.janellealberts.com/photo-devotionals
I write for online pubs like Christianity Today’s women’s sections and have sold photos for some online magazine spots.
Would love to speak with you!
Janelle
Hi Lisa-Jo, I just wanted to say thank you, as always, for your honesty. I am a first-time mom to a beautiful 8-year-old girl. And while I am overjoyed to be a mother, I definitely have my dog days. Your blog is a constant encouragement…it helps me to remember that I’m not alone, that it’s not wrong to feel the way I feel sometimes. Thank you for that.
“There was a while when I felt significant in all the ways that I thought were the opposite of helping someone finish his homework ”
Dear Lisa, I read your posts with tears in my eyes. My first son is 4 and a half month old and I´ve struggled with preeclampsia, low birth weight, breastfeeding issues (he rejected breastfeeding) and colics. All of which made me feel like a failure of a mother. Probably its not such big a deal, but it has been really hard for me. I feel so identified with how you describe yourself since I am too a professional who´s passionate for her work, and I also decided to get pregnant over 30 years. Im a medic, with two specialties, Internal medicine and Nephrology, plus I used to work shifts in an ICU as a resident. I used to have my life figured out, my preferences, good habits and bad ones all figured out. And now I don´t, its like I´ve lost myself. Every day I pray to magically wake up and feel that the monotony of diaper changing, bottle making, baby entertaining is the most beautiful and rewarding job on Earth… but I still don´t, I feel somewhat like a caged animal that once ran free in the wild. I love my baby to death, but every afternoon around 3 pm, while rattling a toy and making funny faces so he gives me just one of his heartwarming smiles I shed a few tears remembering who I used to be….. and hoping that all this has made me a better person.
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