Mama, You Do You

Driving in our new to us minivan with all four kids this week, I had a thought strike me. In the midst of our current audiobook, Ember Rising: The Green Ember, Book 3, babies bantering with one another, and while focused to observe all traffic laws, I considered how different motherhood looks in the twenty-first sentry than the ones before it. My daily tasks aren’t the harvesting and preserving of crops, the care of chickens, and the day-long preparation of food. In fact, I spend little to no time on the daily work that encompassed frontier women one-to-two-hundred years ago.

The last few generations have been fed the lie that we as women, wives, mothers, workforce laborers, entrepenuars, and the so the list goes, can be and do all. It doesn’t take an outside poll, expert, or mama blogger like myself to tell you that having it all is not reality.

No woman does it all. I know it can be easy to look at our favorite podcast host, author, tv personality, or even the mom you follow on social media and wonder how she successfully conquers all she sets her hands to. The fact is, there is so much she doesn’t do while you are busy looking at all she does.

I have had several friends ask me how I manage to make book lists, write a blog, self-publish a book, home educate our four children, and make time for exercising. It might be tempting for someone on the outside looking in to assume I have it all together and do it all. Let me tell you, I certainly don’t do it all, nor do I have it all together. I don’t believe any woman does, not even Joanna Gaines! My laundry pile is always heaping and if it isn’t I feel a huge accomplishment as if summiting Everest. If I spend an hour on dinner I feel a pat on the back is in order. I never work in our yard; our kids and my husband do that. While I am passionate about our house being picked up, it is hardly ever deep-cleaned. We say no to outside commitments more often than yes, and our children are only involved in one extra-curricular activity each that occurs simply once a week.

I’m telling you all this mama to communicate a singular point: You do you. God has uniquely shaped your passions and interests. He has gifted you, equipped you, and molded your every day for the mission he has for you to fulfill. While we are all here to glorify God and love and serve Him forever, the ways in which we do this and the magnitude to which our efforts are visible are as varied as the colors of the sunrise and sunset around the world.

While my role as wife and mother at the core–to love, serve,and raise disciples–is the same as that of every mother in history, it is also varied by the period in which I live, the call of the Lord vocationally upon my husband and our family, my interests and abilities, and the opportunities that I either seize, strive toward, or let slip out of reach.

While your motherhood may not look like Marmee from Little Women (Puffin in Bloom) darning socks and working on the war effort, Ma from The Little House (9 Volumes Set), or even Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, your role looks like God has defined it for this period of time, in this season of life, and by His eternal plan. You do you in all the ways that God has called you to loving and serving your husband and children and your community in the unique ways that make up the fabric of your life.

Driving in my minivan and looking at the beautiful children who ride along with me, I am reminded that all too soon my van will be emptied of all car seats and the precious children that encompass it. In their place will be young men and women sent into the world to make a way for themselves. I hope that when that time comes I will have been faithful more days than not in the everyday in the way that God called me to walk out His purposes for my life in order to have the greatest impact on theirs.

God bless you mamas!

You can now purchase my book, Thirty Balloons: An Adoption Tale, on Amazon.

Author: Brooke Cooney