Guilt Be Gone
3:00 in the afternoon - that was always the hardest. My boys were 6 months & 3 years. We had moved to a new town, no family, few friends. By 7:30 every morning my hubby left the house headed to Clinton or Marshall, AR for work. I stayed home in Conway with those precious babies...all day...by myself. 3:00 was the reckoning hour for me, when we were in the thick of it. My energy was usually depleted by that time of day & the clock was ticking in warp speed toward 5:30 when the hubs would be home. Of course I would’ve gotten “nothing” accomplished. Or so I thought. Looking back now I see that what happened at 3:00 was guilt. That was the time that I looked up from playing with my toddler, nursing the baby, cooking them meals and snacks, & panicked! It was almost time for the hubby to get home & what would he think of this mess? He would probably see all the failures that I saw. I was literally wearing guilt goggles- I only saw the tremendous mess of toy cars, dinosaurs, & dirty high chairs. I would run like a crazy eyed mad woman dodging the minefield of pacifiers and Thomas the Train tracks in a fast dash to pick it all up & make it at least appear that I’d done something worthwhile.
I now look back on those days and see joy instead of the failures, I see my 3 year old sons eyes lighting up as he discovered a new dinosaur sound, or the sweet smile of my baby boy as I rocked him just because I wanted to. Those single moments of joy & peace got lost in that moment of time for me. While I was there in the trenches with dirty diapers & crying fits all I could see was what I wasn’t getting done. The list of things to do around the house, the shower door that had become cloudy from soap covered tiny hands, the pile of laundry in the corner of my bedroom, the brightly colored plastic dishes piled in the sink, I only saw those things as strikes against my “mommy hood”. Now I look at them as my gold stars- given to me by God himself. Guilt - that ridiculous, fabricated guilt- blinded me. I couldn’t see the blessings because I was looking for
the things that I thought would make me a good mommy. Instead of looking at those dirty dishes as guilt, I now see them as 10 minutes that I chose to play with my sweet boys.
As my grandmother would say “the years just go by so fast”. And she’s right. As much as it annoyed me to hear that when I was in the guilt trap of babies & toddlers, she’s right. In those moments of struggle, we wish for the next phase, we wish for them to walk, & talk, to be able to obey & be independent. That’s normal. For me, each year has brought new joy & excitement, more confidence of myself as a mother- so it has gotten easier. I pray I never forget to not only see the good times, but to see those moments of filthy dishes & unkept house. There’s joy there too. There’s belly laughs, and scrunched up baby noses among the mess of scattered toys & screeching toddlers. No matter where your guilt lies, if it’s guilt over not working enough, working too much, not cooking, not cleaning well enough, not spending as much quality time as you’d like, raising kiddos alone- stop & look around. There’s joy there. Right where you are now- even in the battlefield, where you feel there’s no way out. When you feel like there is only failure at every corner, look beyond the guilt - there’s a big belly laugh in there somewhere! Choose to see joy in the chaos of mommydom.
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