A Cup of Courage

I believe that most mother's start their mornings off with not only a cup of coffee or tea but with a cup of courage. "I'm going to be happy today. I'm not going to yell. I'm going to answer every question with a "yes honey", a smile and a pat on the head finishing it up with a "go run along now" conclusion. I am most certainly not going to have a break down ugly cry in my bathroom or in front of my children. I really think that's how most of us start our days but that's not how they usually go or at least that's not how mine usually goes and throw homeschooling and 5 kids on top of that and you can forget it.

Some days we make it. Some days I stop and literally look across the table at my son and wonder where time has gone and then there are days like today when I look across the kitchen and I hear "I spilled green smoothie all over your desk upstairs in YOUR room." Never mind that they've been told a trillion times...no probably more than that...that food and drinks are not to leave the table or the kitchen...but a green smoothie?!!!! That's just a punishment of sentences waiting to happen.

So what happens next? All those resolutions I made that morning are gone. With one little confession.......poof, up in flames they go. And in my head I am saying "stop it Erin" "don't say that" "ok now don't say that" "ohhhhhh that's not a good one either".....and what I see vanishing in front of me is almost unbearable. I see my 9 year old son, his eyes starting to tighten, his shoulders raised, his head bowed down, his heart beating...I don't see it but I can pretty much hear it and  feel it....the tears he is trying so hard to keep locked away start to cascade down the soft skin of his entire 9 year young being and I start to see his confidence that we are trying so hard to build crumble with just a few heat of the moment words, that while afterwards I would give anything to take back, but in the moment I can't seem to halt.

I feel in that moment and once it's long gone, like a hypocrite. I now have to stand in front of him again and apologize. I will ask him to start over. I will pray he will forgive me and I know he will, he always does. I will kneel down, seeing my reflection in his eyes, those eyes which mirror so many times my failures, my triumphs, my humanity, my sin festering, the river of forgiveness will stream from his eyes and I will fold him into me like I did all those nights when he was first born, kissing the top of his Charlie Brown head and wondering how someone like myself could be entrusted with such fragility, such innocence.

I once read a book called " Parenting Is Not For Cowards" I get what point the author was trying to make but I have to say at the end of the day I actually disagree. Parenting is exactly for cowards because honestly most of us working this 24/7 gig are courageously cowardly terrified. We are terrified of our reaction to the 50th spill we find our selves knee deep in, we are terrified of the swamp monster deep within us lurking, waiting to rear it's ugly heard, we are terrified of judgement not only from others but from those we live with and love with, we are terrified of taking on our child's education and then being deemed as a failure if they fail and guess what? They will fail. We will fail. We are terrified of the tantrum they throw in the supermarket because we've told them no to the sugary badness that will rot their teeth. We are terrified of the unknown and let's face it this entire parent hood journey is quite frankly the unknown. So YES we are cowards!!!!! However, just like that pansy of a lion on the Thanksgiving Special that graces our televisions every year, The Wizard of Oz, we are not alone.

I am so very afraid. I am so afraid of ruining my children, of being that mommy dearest and while there won't be wire hangers or a movie made about me, God I hope there is no movie. I am fearful there will be something else....a green smoothie kind of something else.

I once had a priest, a kind wonderful priest, tell me to wear a Rosary around my neck each day so that it might better help me in my endeavors to yell less. So I tried that and then I was riddled with guilt because not only was I yelling but now I was yelling with Mother Mary hanging tightly around my neck and over my heart.Talk about feeling like a loser lost cause.

 However, I realized today in that moment of tears, in my bathroom and stripped down to my hiccupping sobs and my simple nothingness that my raw moments, the ones I pray no one ever sees or hears, the moments that have even myself asking "Who are you? What are you? Where did you come from? Where did you go?" while these moments are not my finest, they also do not define me. They do not define the person that I am or the mother I am or the mother and person that I can be.

What they do gift me with is this desire to want to ask the woman in the grocery store if she needs help the next time I hear her yelling at her child, with the desire to judge less harshly when I see or hear or read about a parent that has done the unthinkable to their child, the desire to be able to look at a dear friend and say with ease "I forgive you" just like my wise son says to me so many times and some times so many times a day. 

Parents are sometimes made up of cowards that's just how it goes but when we fail we can always get back up shake the dust from our mouths and our hearts and begin again. Apologizing may not fix or change our hurts, our stabs, our collisions, but it will show our children what sorry looks like and will hopefully help us all remember that as long as we move forward we are courageously, not cowardly, making it on this adventure called parenthood.

Ringrazio Dio ~ Thanks be to God.