Charge through it.

I’ve hear the tales of mom’s who lose themselves to motherhood.  We sacrifice it all for the greater good of our family because we are mom and if mom doesn’t do it, who will.  No one loves like Mom.  Mom is Mom and there is no one like Mom.   

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed these years of giving my absolute all to my all-too-often-thankless family who far too rarely ask me what I need.  I sadistically enjoy pushing myself and striving to please people who are constantly reminding me what I’m NOT doing for them.  Those genuine smiles and fleating moments of geniuine admiration and graciousness and gratefulness, when they just can’t help but admit that I’m actually the best person in their whole life, have always been enough to shake the lingering feeling that I am a huge dissapointment to them.  But they are children.  My children.  And it is my job to shake that selfishness out of them.  Children are selfish.  Innately selfish.  And it is a huge parental responsibility, for the sake of the greater good of all mankind, to teach them that selfishness is unacceptable.  No, you simply may not walk this earth thinking that you are the most important thing on it.  And while I can’t stress enough how difficult that is to explain to a toddler, or a 15 year old oldest child, or her three younger siblings (because when you have three siblings nothing in life is ever fair, EVER!), I never imagined I would be tolerating it from the man who was supposed to be in these parenting trenches with me. I never imagined that he would let me get so much deeper into those trenches, alone, and up against four kids.  i didn’t stand a chance.  

So I lost a battle.  I sacrificed myself and took one for the team.  I took on a very big little army and I didn’t have the back up that I needed when those trenches got dark and deep.  And I let my guard down, heading into enemy territory (parenthood) with a selfish partner.  I needed someone who was going to follow me into the depths of hell when need be, and who would reach down and grab me and pull me up when it was painfully obvious that I was in over my head.  I needed that.  You can’t just hunker down and make yourself comfortable in the parenting trenches.   Especially when you have four kids.  Just because I manage to keep us all alive and get dinner on the table and rarely ask you to lift a finger doesn’t mean I’m winning the battle.  There is a war going on, and  that is not the level of solidarity and united front that wins wars.  

But that’s what mom does.  I was so blissfully enthralled in this parenting war and so madly in love with my four enemies (precious babies) that I failed to notice that my back up was…back…way, way back.   Definitely out of reach and practically out of sight, unless it was his turn for my affection.  But I charged through.  I always charge through.  Even now, after I have surrendered to one painfully lost battle, after I have armed my kids with some destructive resentment and bitterness to use against me, I continue to charge through.  after my broken heart finally convinced me that I might be stronger on my own rather than weakened by the dissapointment of a life partner who didn’t love me with all his heart and who I couldn’t count on to be by my side if he simply didn’t want to, I let go, and charge through.  

That’s what mom does.  And it was worth it because if there is one thing my kids have learned, it’s that I would take a bullet for them, even from their own smoking guns.  I’m mom, and you will put me through hell while I raise you to not be a selfish prick, and you will hate me and you will blame me and you will unleash all of your frustrations, whether significant or utterly ridiculous, my fault or yours, on me.  It will all fall on me.  Mom.  Because only a mom can forgive you over and over again as you fail and grow and (god willing) learn to get over yourself.  

I feel like a lone soldier these days. Deeper in the trenches than I have ever braved before.  But somehow I feel stronger just knowing that I’m on my own rather than looking behind me and always feeling dissapointed.