To my fellow mothers who are loosing themselves…

Wine, chocolate, the occasional beauty parlor visit, mommy groups, bubble baths and escaping to the grocery store alone isn’t the solution…. hate to break it to you. They are like medicine when you are sick but not an actual cure. The true cure for sickness is a healthy immune system and sleep. Did you know that you will die without sleep sooner than you will die without food? The tips I am going to share with you are as essential as rest and Vitamin C, ladies…. no medicine can replace overall health. So, how do we become a healthy us instead of a medicated us?First, let’s ask the question, what do we truly need (not just want, but actually need).

What do we truly need?

The biggest thing is that we need to feel loved

Littler things fall under this: we need compassion and empathy, we need to not feel alone and we need to feel beautiful. According to Dr. Emerson Eggereichs who wrote Love and Respect, love is the most fundamental need of the feminine soul. If we think about it, all of our little needs fall into that one anyway. When we feel deeply loved we feel invincible, we feel appreciated, we feel valued, we feel seen. If we have problems with self esteem we may not feel worthy of those emotions, but they still make us come alive. (Also, read Broken and Beautiful, and 2 Keys to Being Yourself)

Why does motherhood feel so draining, like we are dying inside, like someone could literally kill us with another pile of dirty laundry, like the word “mommy” could actually be the LAST thing we want to hear? Because we don’t feel loved! We feel used. We feel like a pack mule or a slave. We feel like the only time anyone cares if we are around us when they need something from us. Our hands, feet, back and generally pregnant belly are constantly aching and often we don’t remember the last time we had a chance to take a shower, let alone shave or fix our hair. We genuinely need to have our love tank filled far more often than typically happens. Life is busy, our husbands are equally tired and stressed, and, as a result, we continue to survive solely off sticky kisses and random leg hugs while we wash the never ending stream of dishes.

Ladies, you know that we can only run on empty for so long. Loving and treating ourselves is nice but it’s nothing compared to the power of feeling freely, truly and deeply loved by someone outside ourselves. Who is that person? It would be nice if he were our husband, wouldn’t it? But, we are married to human beings who are subject to fatigue, forgetfulness, routine and exhaustion just like we are… it’s not their fault they can’t completely fill our need for love. They are not meant to!

The good news? There IS someone who can fill us, someone not limited by being human, but at the same time, is human, so He “gets it “. He is waiting for you. Waiting for you to notice how much He cares. (Read also- God Speaks your Love Language). Building a deep and tangible relationship with Him is the only true way of keeping our love gas tank full and us from barely sputtering on E as we survive from leg hug to leg hug.

Finding myself in motherhood, means being normal, but discovering who I am to to someone else, learning to see me through His eyes, learning to see the beauty He saw when He knit me in my mother’s womb, envisioning all the amazing things I would be able to bring to the world .

Too busy for another relationship? Simple tips to make it possible…

Stop romanticizing that in order to have a relationship with God you have to look like this:

Just make God part of your chaos – invite Him in – and don’t apologize for the mess – invite Him to help.

1) Silence

Find 5 min here and there as often as you can. Yes, it usually is unreasonable to regularly find an hour of peace, like so many experts recommend. The idea is to create a SPIRIT of silence in your heart. Pretend you are still asleep for a couple extra moments in the morning. Turn off the TV or the radio. Make sure kids are fed and pottied, tell them not to kill each other, and drown them out for a few minutes with headphones. Listen to classical music, Christian music or, even better, daily meditation podcasts or prayer podcasts (there are wonderful ones on the free Laudate smartphone App). No one said you had to sit down or physically remove yourself, we all know how hard that can be. You can wash dishes, take a walk, drive to the store or fold laundry at the same time. The key is to escape for a moment from the crazy, to drown out the noise, to practice being quiet, to still your SOUL even if your body is still in motion.

2) Prayer

The biggest misconception about prayer is that it is not monologue but dialogue. You complaining to God about how “sucky” your day or your life is, does not constitute prayer. Imagine calling someone on the phone and telling them everything horrible you can think of and then just hanging up. Was that conversation? Prayer also isn’t simply wrote repetition of the same words over and over. The purpose of wrote prayers or repetitive prayers is to put us in a quiet and peaceful mindset in which we are able to mentally go somewhere else – similar to “background music” or “mood music” for deeper conversation or contemplation.

Recognizing that we are speaking to another person who is not limited by our own imagination, that we don’t need to speak for them. Often we may need to give Him a moment to respond and realize that it won’t always be what we thought we wanted to hear. We need to practice this because we need to spend time with Him to distinguish it from the over eager voices in our head and everywhere else – My sheep know my voice (Jn 10:27) – because they spend time with Him. The biggest problem we often have in prayer is learning to listen, This is part of why first building a spirit of silence amidst the chaos is so critical – for He speaks in a whisper (1 Kings 19:12).

The point is to make a habit of turning to Him – multiple times a day. Make it simple, bring Him in. All the little things that irritate you, tell Him. All the things that make your heart happy, tell him. Ask Him, “Did you see that?” Make it a priority to spend time “at His feet” every so often, ask your “DH” to hang with the kids while you spend time with God.

Stop thinking of God as someone far away or someone with whom we have to be formal, all He wants is to be part of your life, the chaotic life He gave you.

3) Feel His presence

Remember, God isn’t limited, He speaks all 5 love languages, and He knows yours – (Read: Does God Speak your Love Language?). How has He tried to love you today?

4) Cultivate a Spirit of Gratitude

Attempt to focus on the positive. Forgive yourself for not being able to get everything done. Be thankful that you have another day. Know that the opportunities you are presented with are opportunities to grow and uncover deeper levels of yourself or else they are moments of joy, just ’cause. Recognize that He is in every moment and every circumstance and you will finally know that someone cares. We are not alone.

#togetherinthetrenches #IamCALLED