Navigating the Unexpected

Mom-Life in a Pandemic + That’s Just Every Day!

I thought my life was going to dramatically change this year. My youngest was heading off to kindergarten, and I was going to have 35 hours of uninterrupted single-minded brain activity a week where once I had zero. With all this newfound brain space (plus the reinstallation of my personal bubble), I was envisioning doing all the things I hadn’t done with my life over the last decade and dedicating that time and space to something other than wiping noses, pulling teeth, coordinating playdates, and warding off the World War III of sibling rivalry.

My self-diagnosed adult ADD was going to transform into laser beam focus pointed straight at all my goals and dreams, tackling one a day for the next 180 days. And just like Sabrina the Teenage Witch, every day around 3:00, with the simple snap of a finger, my kitchen apron would swoop out of thin air, wrap itself around the curves of my baby-bearing hips, and like a perfect housewife out of a 1950’s commercial, I would reenter the magical world of motherhood ready to embrace all it had to offer. All the way until 7 am the next morning where I would have another dreamy seven hours to myself.

“The Modern Housewife” by mrrobertwade (wadey)

“With the simple snap of a finger, my kitchen apron would swoop out of thin air, wrap itself around the curves of my baby-bearing hips, and like a perfect housewife out of a 1950’s commercial, I would reenter the magical world of motherhood ready to embrace all it had to offer.”

Ok, so maybe I had my sights set in the clouds. In reality, the last six months have contrasted from the above scene I described to take on more the feel of Lucille Ball’s slapstick humor, complete with messiness and imperfection than the so-called bliss I thought I had awaiting me. And I’m one of the fortunate few who have actually had my kids in school in person…mostly. We’ve had our fair share of 14-day quarantines and shorter stints of absences until those little green lights we call rapid tests came back negative. In one six-and-a-half-week period, my kindergartner was at school for a total of just one of those weeks. My days and my plans have definitely needed to be held with an open hand.

What I have learned over the last eight months of the 2020-21 school year is that there is no way to live a dual life as a mother. You simply are still Mom 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even on a vacation without those beautiful chubby-cheeked giftlings you try to put in the back of your brain for a few days away with your hubby. Plain and simple, they are forever stuck in the forefront. Quite literally. The frontal lobe of the human brain is where important functions like memory, emotions, and problem solving are stored. Aren’t those the makings of motherhood? Yep.

And so, through all of this, I’ve decided I don’t really want to live that dual life I had envisioned. While I write this article, I am realizing my eldest forgot his Chromebook charging here at home for the umpteenth time. I’m getting sidetracked with the mental gymnastics of trying to figure out how we are going to get the kids to all their activities tonight while I also have an appointment to make. Bottom line: I am still thinking about those annoying little boogers who can frustrate the sense out of me. Why? Because they’re my little boogers for kids, and they have changed me forever. They have helped shape me into who I am and have molded my view on life.

“And so, through all of this, I’ve decided I don’t really want to live that dual life I had envisioned.”

I won’t ever go back to some previous version of myself. As in the words of my favorite blue and yellow finned friend, Dory, “I shall call them my squishies and they shall be mine and they shall be my squishies.” See what I did there? I am forever and hopelessly a mother who quotes mostly from Disney movies. But you know what else? I will leave traces of my motherhood everywhere I go—my supernatural way of knowing when someone is feeling down, my ability to thrive when there are a million little things going on all around me, my attention to detail and equally invaluable commitment to people—and the world will be better because of it.

So, I’ll welcome the messy for a while longer. And I’ll be better because of it too: As Alicia Britt Chole so eloquently points out in her “40 Days of Decrease” devotional, peace isn’t always equated with quiet, or whatever other thing I thought I needed. I will, as Alicia argues, resist “adding self-satisfaction to the purity of peace.” The source of which is a Person, Jesus, rather than in any circumstance I dream up.

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POSTED BY

Jenna

Jenna Kruse is a teacher but not in a classroom. She loves to think outside the box and inside the Word and is daily in need of an attitude adjustment. She is a wife to Justin, a mother to three children ages 10, 8 and 5 and a mentor to teenagers and young adults. You can learn more about the heart behind her blog HERE.

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