November 30, 2009 | Mama Smith

hello road, I am rubber...

...mind if I leave a few stinging hot tire tracks across your face??

I’m learning that when we put our “Yes” on the table, and say, “Okay God, I am tired of operating out of the Old Lies. I want to KNOW who you are and have that change me and how I do life”...it will rarely be a walk in the park. And there will be many opportunities to take that “yes” back and exit doors to parachute out of along the way.

I have put my yes on the table. I am tired of the old Amy M.O. I want lovesick Amy M.O. who is daily humbled and stirred by this UNcreated God that is so undone by MY feeble, created heart that he watches my every move, that he squeals with delight over how I make a pbj for the boys, how I clean up that 50th spilled cup of the day, how I wipe poop out of the once-again soiled pants of our potty-training son. That he really is interested in me and how I do things. Not just John Piper. Not just Mother Theresa. But me.

And yet, with that “yes”, comes the painful reality that change is hard and simultaneously, some days life is just plain hard. Some days that 50th cup of spilled milk, or 50th fight to break up, or 50th willful response is enough to send me over the edge. The boys, in all their growing, changing, boyish wildness, have been wearing me plum out these past few days. I have fallen into bed the past two days wondering if I am doing ANYTHING right.

They must have secretly learned to read and read my last few blogs, not wanting me to get slack.

Or rather, Jesus is really wanted to make this new desire and hope in my heart a reality. And how best to do that but by bringing on the heat.

It’s in these moments, when I feel the burn of the rubber meeting the road, that the old ways of relating must be rooted out. If you’ve ever done yard work, you know how annoying rooting out a feisty, dense weed can be. Rooting out old patterns of relating, old lies we’ve believe, old operating modes is no different.

There has been a lot going on at our house with all this adoption stuff, in-laws visiting, holidays, sickness, that inevitably our sensitive boys are going to be a little rocked and on edge for a bit. As the tears, irritability, and anger crescendos, I’ve found myself running up against the wall of “HOW on earth do you push through when all you feel like doing is giving up!?”

Can I get an AMEN from any of you mothers out there?

I don’t think the issue is how to NOT have those moments in mothering, because if we are honest with ourselves and our limited human frames, we will all reach those. Some of us quicker than others, but we will all have those emotions at some point or another. Shoving them, pretending like they don’t exist, plastering on a smile are all surface ways of dealing with them. Hacking of the feisty weed at the ground.

But what about that gnarly root that’s still alive and kicking below the surface, just waiting for some rain and heat to pop right back up?

What about our hearts? What is going on there, where the root begins. Where what we believe sprouts outwardly into how we act and operate.

What I think I’m seeing in a new light is avoiding those moments is not my goal. Pressing through them is. But not in the way I used to think.

Deep breathing techniques, happy thoughts, are all fine and good, but when it’s been a really, REALLY bad day and one thing just keeps piling on the next, and the lies about who we are or aren’t are come pouring in, there has to be something more beautiful and captivating than just getting through the day and crawling into my warm bed. Or even something more beautiful and captivating than training my children well and being a good example to them and others. If duty is all I have to cling to – be it a good mom, raise good kids, be a good example to them, be a good christian – I am screwed, people.

Because duty does nothing to my heart. The heart that Jesus is so very interested in. This is not a call to slack off. This is a call to fight. But to know what you are actually fighting for. Lovers will ALWAYS out work workers. If I am merely a worker of the Lord, sure, I’ll make it to heaven, but what a dull road it will be. Whereas if I’m a LOVER of the Lord, wow…that has just been opening a whole new world to me.

If I’m a lover, when those stressful moments/days come, how will I operate differently in pressing through the exhaustion, pressing through the lies that I’m a crappy mom, pressing through feelings of being absolutely overwhelmed with how to balance shepherding/loving/disciplining my kids?

If I truly believe I am delighted in through every moment of every day for the rest of my entire life, not just by some human – my husband or my kids (though that’d be impossible anyhow) – but by the very God who holds all the stars in his hands, how will that radically change how I perceive my circumstances?? How could it change how you look at yours??

I am tired of trying and failing to just be a dutiful worker.

In the earthly sense, I get that it would be silly to just be a dutiful worker of a wife to Matthew (what kind of marriage would that be??) So then, how much more do I want to FLEE from the faulty understanding that I am just a dutiful worker for Jesus. And instead FIGHT the lies, the unbelief, the doubts about who I am and RUN towards becoming a LOVER of Him. Wanting to know his heart. His heart towards me. Towards my family. Towards the world. Begin to understand who he really is…not just who I, in my limited imagination, have thought of him to be.

I think falling in love like that could seriously begin to stump grind the old, ancient tree roots in me that I’ve thought for so long were just little dandelion weeds I could deal with on my own by just using a bit more elbow grease. That’s what I’m crazy praying for.