Last week I cried so long and so hard I ended up with a wicked headache. Some days parenting is like that. Nobody ever told me that some days you will curl up in the fetal position on the floor and wail because you don’t know what to do. Nobody ever told me that because these aren’t the glory days of motherhood.
Nobody ever told me about this season of motherhood. This in-between season. This season when they need me for some things but not others. This season when they are so independent but still dependent. This season when they make plans without me. This season when they make their own choices, some good, some bad, and need to learn from their mistakes. This season of great success and great failure. This season of learning to fly on their own. This season when they know everything and I know nothing. This season of figuring out what my role is. I’m still their mom, always will be, but it just looks different now.
Nobody ever told me about this season, probably because this isn’t a season of life when stories are shared as easily. When my kids were little, I’d look to others and then later, gladly share experiences about pregnancy, labor and delivery, sleep training, breastfeeding, potty training, our views on screen time, teaching them how to read and ride a bike, struggles with learning disabilities and navigating IEP meetings. I’d gladly share because they were my struggles and my victories, at least it felt like that. People would tell me, little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems. Now at 44, my teens are 18, 16, 14 and I know there is truth to that saying. I still have struggles and victories every day, but the stories of those struggles and victories in parenting, aren’t necessarily mine anymore. They have a story behind them that belongs to another human being. And that human being is one of my teenagers. That’s hard. It’s hard to see my kids going through hard things. These growing pains are real and raw and hard. It’s also hard to respect my teens privacy in such a way that I often feel cut off from the world.
A lot of times, we just want to vent about our teens and what we are going through as their parents, and I think that’s okay. It’s easy to vent to a friend and say, “My teen has been so moody lately, it’s terrible! I don’t know how to handle it.” But oftentimes, issues that arise in the teen years are a lot more complicated than that. These issues can be heartbreaking and gut-wrenching. Things that my teens have gone through or that their friends have gone through have brought me to my knees crying out to the Lord, asking why in one breath and asking for help in the next. Sometimes all I want to do is pick up the phone and call or text a friend and lay it all out. So I pause and think and pray. I don’t always call or text that friend, not because of embarrassment or feeling like a failure, but because whatever is going on is not my story to tell.
Sometimes I might text or call a friend and say something like, “We are going through something right now, can you please pray for us?” This has helped bring my husband and me closer as we are relying on one another through the struggles in parenting and it has helped bring us closer to God as we are laying it all at His feet.
One could argue that by keeping these struggles to ourselves, we aren’t helping others. But we can’t from the thick of things. When we are in it, we need God, we need prayer, and we need community lifting us up in prayer. Prayer is powerful. I’ve prayed for my friends before without knowing all the details of their struggles. I don’t need to know all the details; God knows them, and He’s holding them all in the palm of his hand. He sees the big picture, and He knows how everything will turn out. There is so much peace in handing over control to the creator of the universe. I will probably be of much more help to others when I am on the other side of it, when the mess can be the message. And maybe the mess will be my teenagers’ message more than mine. After all, some of my most powerful learning moments came because of my greatest failures.
Nobody ever told me that motherhood would break me into a million pieces one day. But as I live and breathe, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It is my most important job, my greatest joy, privilege, and blessing. As motherhood keeps breaking me, I trust in my God to put me back together in the most beautiful way possible, just as He’s doing a work on my kids, more than I can ask or think or imagine, He’s working on me still.
by Whitney Fleming 
by Christine Carter 
