Poopy Parenting

Mary Cassatt is known for her idyllic paintings depicting the love between a mother and her child.  Her paintings capture the most beautiful and intimate moments a mother shares with her child.  While I do not have an enormous appreciation for her paintings of mothers nursing their babes, I do appreciate the simple elegance with which she portrays motherhood.  She gives the high calling of parenthood due respect and draws attention to the sacredness surrounding a mother's love for her child.

Summer time by Mary Cassatt

As precious as those moments depicted in her paintings may be, there are days when mothers would call them all a farce, for some days are difficult, exhausting, and downright stinky.  While my memories with our children are filled with Cassatt style moments, I've had some challenging days as well.  When I consider that parenting is God's tool to refine and fashion me, exposing deep rooted sinful attitudes I never knew existed, bringing me to my knees as I cling to the feet of Jesus in tears, I know that those difficult days are sacred too, for they are preparing my children and me for eternity.  

"Mothering is no second-rate ministry for the spiritually and intellectually mediocre. Mothering is a Christ-rated ministry for soul and mind sculptors and what could ever be substandard about passing on Christ’s standard? " (Ann Voskamp)

Father, please refine me so that You may work through me to mold each child's heart, mind, and soul.  Give them hearts that chase passionately after you and the courage to stand for truth through any circumstance and even when the whole world seems to stand against us.  You are for us, Lord, and that's all that really matters.

Romans 8:31

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?

I must often pray for peace in our home.  One moment our children are best friends, and the next moment, they are arguing.  When my precious little angels fight, I am vividly reminded that self control is indeed spiritually given.  Only when we allow God's Spirit to take FULL control over the heart and will driving each of us, does He give us the supernatural power to pour out love when angered, kindness when frustrated, and gentle words when offended. 

Galatians 5:22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

When my 6-year-old sat in on an at-home kickboxing workout this past weekend,  I took time to explain each kick and punch, which could be used in self defense, hoping he would get interested enough to do the workout with me. Instead he said, "So, when I get into a fight with my sister, I can use these moves?" Mommy fail!

When I look back on those especially trying days, sometimes I just have to giggle.  I'll describe an incident from this morning as an example of these frustrating yet humorous moments for weary mothers.  Our son's room has had a strange smell for quite some time. I have cleaned and sanitized almost everything in his room including the bedspread, sheets, mattress pad, closet and dresser drawers. Yesterday, the carpet cleaners came to deep clean all the carpets. I picked up all the toys and smaller pieces of furniture so they could get to as much carpet as possible, but they did not clean under the beds. We spent a fortune on this carpet cleaning bill, and the whole process was a huge inconvenience, especially since the kids were home for MLK day, and we all had to sequester together in a one room for four hours.

This morning as I was still trying to pull myself out of bed, my son came to me and said, "Mom, the carpet cleaners didn't get the black stain out from under my bed."

I replied, "What stain?  Why didn't you tell me there was a stain under your bed when the cleaners were here?"

So, I hopped out of bed and conducted an investigation.  I discovered that at some point in the past, our boy had accidentally pooped in his big boy underwear.  He had changed out of the dirty underwear quickly and threw the underwear in the washing machine, hiding his shame so that his mother would not find out.  Apparently, the poop must have fallen out and rolled under the bed. It had been there for who knows how long but long enough to soften and stain the carpet.  So, I spent my glorious morning scrubbing human feces out of the carpet while thinking that the carpet cleaners could have done a much better job yesterday while they were here.

I shared this story with a friend who had been up late last night cleaning the debris from her newborn's diaper explosion out of her designer love seat.   And I'll never forget when a dear friend came to visit me at the hospital right after our firstborn's birth.  As do most anxious new moms, I told her how our infant had met all the critical milestones required for hospital discharge except that she had not had a bowel movement yet.  Just then, our precious firstborn blew out her diaper with her first poop, and meconium oozed out all over my friend's fingers and hands as she had been holding my child admiringly at that moment. Grose!

Before motherhood, the subject of human feces was one I would have never EVER mentioned to anyone except a doctor should she ever ask.  Now it is the subject of a blog post and a right of passage for new moms.  It is also the bond that unites mothers and confirms their commitment to this parenting oath of office similar to the primitive spit handshake or blood oath.  Poop may unite us, but Christ's blood sustains us through even the stinkiest days.

Psalm 55:22

Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.