The Haunting Fear

I spend a lot of time laying in bed in breathtaking fear that I am ruining my children.  The knowledge that I have these little beings made in the image of God joyfully singing, eating, talking, playing, watching tv, eating, reading, building things, and eating some more, all under my watch is terrifying.  I am responsible for not only feeding them and keeping them clean and clothed, I am responsible for all of the education they get.  They learn way too much by watching me, listening to me, and following me around all day long.  Now that I am responsible to teach them everything it makes me kind of sick most of the time.

The thing that scares me the most is that they are so impressionable.  I am looking at them through the lens of my own weakness, shortcomings and sin.  They have so much potential.  Most of them are smarter than I am and more spiritually aware than I am.  I am painfully aware that I am not capable of giving them all that they need to be the people God created them to be.  I am afraid that I will limit them by trying to keep my life manageable.  Mostly I am afraid that I will steal their joy by living in my own constant fear of ruining their lives.  They don't understand my bizarre behavior because my burden is invisible to them.  I think they just think I am a crazy lady that had way too many children.  They love being in a large family, but they are not at all interested in managing one of their own.  That right there starts the fear talk chattering in my head.

A very wise women told me recently that I can't be a fantastic mom and housekeeper and a amazing teacher at the same time.  She has tried to take the middle ground in all spheres and be satisfied with that.  Now if I tried to compare my middle ground to her middle ground it would become pretty laughable.  Her oldest is in residency in some specialty I can't even spell, and she has done some incredibly intense parenting of children from hard places, on top of the fact that I have helped her clean her house before events a couple of times and am well aware that her regular cleaning schedule includes things I have never done at my house.  I love her dearly and appreciate her advice.  I hope God is as generous with my middle ground as he has been with hers.  We did both agree that technology has played a big part in wrecking a lot of great educational opportunities to get lost in some great books, and killed a lot of joy of parenting due to the amount of time it requires to monitor.  But alas, God has brought this wilderness to our lives to be conquered for his glory.

I have been wrestling all day with how to conquer this debilitating fear.  Prayer and faith are all that come to mind.  That and repentance, repentance, repentance and getting up and trying again to stop doing it my own self.  Keeping an eternal perspective helps, although if I start to look too far down the road that is when the fear gets really dark and scary.  Maybe just having enough faith to make today the best day that it can be, and letting God spoon feed me for a while in that way.  Most nights it just looks like a pathetic woman on her knees gasping for breath hoping that God will cover all the dumb things I did in front of my kids all day.  I wake up in the morning, chow down on God's word, ask my kids for forgiveness and assure them that God is a lot more gracious than I am.  I know that he is, he chose me, and I am less pathetic than I was when he covered me with his love. 

I am thankful for Costco, trees that turn into flower gardens in the spring, cloudscapes that make you want to pull over and sing, neighbors that keep me humble in a multitude of ways, children dancing, fun music, pretty dresses, the fellowship of moms that encourage one another not to give up, wind that bites my ears and makes me walk faster than I meant to, letters of intent for my daughters to run track I didn't believe that day would ever come, sisters having lunch together like grown ups.