Mother's Day in Quarantine (Megan)

A recent study claimed that “ the average mother devotes a staggering 57 hours a week to tasks such as cooking, cleaning, washing and playing nurse to the family...  They say that “typically a mum carries out 34 tasks per day, a grand total of 238 each week”  (Rebecca McKnight).  This estimate seems a little low to me.  I have to wonder if it fully accounts for the mornings when twin toddlers hop into their mother’s bed to wake the baby at an ungodly hour or the frenzied home school day when Mother scrambles to teach multiple grade levels in between dentist appointments.  Does it include the afternoons and evenings when she scribbles grocery lists while prepping dinner or the nights she tackles laundry mountains while engaging in the heart-to-heart conversations with teens?  Or the countless times she has rallied to calm her toddler’s night terrors and then finally, collapsing in bed, nursed the baby who won’t leave her arms until morning dawns and she begins all over again?

Since the COVID-19 virus sent our nation into lockdown mode, social media has been flooded with stories of deflated mothers whose routines have been turned upside down by tedious days at home with their children.   As I’ve scrolled through these accounts of miserable isolation, cancelled vacations, unsatisfied cravings for  fast-food fixes, and hair crises (due to closed salons), I’ve felt my own agitation and discontentment increase.  Admittedly our own family vacations and trips to restaurants and salons are few and far between, but somehow reading my friends’ protests has  stirred up in me a sense of being deprived of my rights as a woman and drained by the demands of motherhood.  Suddenly I’m finding myself tallying each of these 238 daily tasks I perform each week and wondering when I’ll ever have the chance to “clock out.”

Following a particularly impossible morning with countless potty training accidents, a failed attempt at writing a sonnet with my elementary kids, and confirmed reports that my 3 year old was doing planks and push-ups with a broken arm, I put on my running shoes and fled the chaos of my household long enough to do some ranting and soul searching.  A few miles into my run, Psalm 43:5 came to mind, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”

I held tenaciously to these words, letting them penetrate and calm my anxious heart.  Suddenly I saw my restless discontentment for what it was and knew that I could make the conscious choice to shut down the toxic, swirling unrest in my spirit and, instead, number the unmistakable answers to prayer and unexpected blessings I’d received in just the past year.  I recalled the startling, yet joyful, surprise that I was expecting our ninth baby.  So many friends prayed me through a difficult pregnancy, collected all of the maternity clothes and baby gear I was lacking, and lavished us with meals when our seventh son was born.  I considered the sisterhood of sweet ladies at our homeschool Co-Op who cheered me on as I struggled through the doorway each Tuesday with half a dozen children, including my squawking newborn in the front carrier and wild twins on monkey leashes.  My brave smile thinly masked the inadequacy I felt and the overwhelming fear that I would prove to be a failure and a burden.  Yet these women sought me out, empathized with me in our common plight as mothers, listened with compassion to what they couldn’t comprehend, laughed through tears over what none of us could control, and blessed us immeasurably with their extraordinary creativity and skill as teachers…  They quietly picked up the pieces I awkwardly dropped and served my family with such an abundance of  grace that I couldn’t help but feel loved and treasured.   When I’ve thought of these dear women and the strength they shared with me when I felt most weak, the image of Moses has come to mind.  This meek leader of an unruly people was called on by God to raise His hands over the battle with the Amalekites.  And when his hands grew too heavy for him to lift, Aaron and Hur stepped in to support his aching arms so that the  people of God would prevail.  What a humbling image of human frailty and our calling to support each other!

”  Strengthen the feeble hands,
    steady the knees that give way;
⁴ say to those with fearful hearts,
    “Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
    he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
    he will come to save you” (Is. 35:3-4). 

I think that one of the saddest elements of the COVID-19 restrictions is the fear of contaminated hands.  While some people have hoarded a lifetime supply of Purell and Clorox wipes, the rest of us have obsessed over how we’ll keep our families clean and safe from potentially life-threatening illness.  With the necessary evils of quarantine and social distancing, we have been prevented from engaging in the life-giving connections with other believers that feeds our spirits and empowers us for the daunting job of motherhood.  Could this be the root of our unrest?  Have we allowed the uncertainties of these times to take our eyes off the God who saves us and to distract us from our divine calling to serve His people?  Let’s not throw up our hands in defeat or fold them in apathy during these days when we’re apart.  Maybe, instead of scrolling and comparing each other’s Facebook feeds, we could pause to pray or send a text of encouragement to a friend with drooping arms…

Today, as I celebrate my twentieth year as a mother, I am flooded with a myriad of rich memories I’ve made with my children.  It amazes me how a couple of decades can mellow and sweeten what I recall about the often-traumatic days as an exhausted, new mother with postpartum depression.  What I wouldn’t give to revisit my 21 year old self, give her a gentle shake, and promise her that she would indeed survive the tantrums and sleepless nights.  I’d reassure her that the spunky little daughter who was feeding bees to her baby brother would grow up to be a passionate nurse and that the little boy who couldn’t make it through his first grade math lessons would graduate summa cum laude and earn scholarships to an honor’s college.  (It remains to be seen what will become of my vivacious twins who ride the ceiling fan and pick our locks with flossers, but I can hardly wait to find out!)  Looking back, I would gladly relive even the most difficult days in order to snuggle the baby versions of my adult children just one more time, to enter into their antics and messes, or to simply laugh with my husband at the end of an interminable day, instead of dragging him down with me into my slough of self- pity...

My mom is a thousand miles away from me on this Mother’s Day, so I comfort myself with treasured memories of the hundred times she held my hand and rocked my babies.   One of the important lessons Mom taught me that we have power over the narratives we tell ourselves.  With a slight adjustment of our “lens,” we can transform a limited, bleak viewpoint into a panorama of joyful, childlike expectancy and hope.  We can airbrush even the bleakest pictures with humor and grace to make them beautiful!  We can bemoan the disaster our kids left through the house when they “cleaned” with “Styrofoam,” or we can laugh at the blizzard and add this crazy snapshot to our album of hilarious memories.

Take heart, you mamas who are in the trenches with me!  The same God who defeated the Amalekites through the ministry of trembling hands has promised to renew our strength, lavish us with new mercies every morning, enlighten us with wisdom when we ask for it, and when we find ourselves isolated, support us with His own “hands.”

“Like as a father teaches his children, so the Lord teaches them that fear Him. He puts His arms upon them. Marvellous condescension! God Almighty, Eternal, Omnipotent, stoops from His throne and lays His hand upon the child's hand, stretching His arm upon the arm of Joseph, that he may be made strong!” (Spurgeon)