Why being a stay at home mom (SAHM) is the hardest thing I've ever done

I've been a SAHM for the last 8 years. While I've held some part time jobs in that time, they were all tailored to being available to kids. It is the hardest thing I've ever done. Here's why:

• Noise. I really like quiet and kids aren't quiet. Even those few precious moments a day when they are asleep aren't truly quiet. Someone is up and down to go the bathroom. Someone has music playing and I have one that talks in her sleep.


• Constancy. There are no breaks in the day when you are keeping up with three kids. Someone needs something almost all the time. Usually, all three need something at one time. My three year old can invent trouble in the blink of an eye and requires constant supervision. I would like a scheduled break in the day...30 minutes to eat, or even 5 minutes to go the bathroom all by myself.


• Immediacy. I am someone who is slow to make a decision. Not always because I am hesitant or fearful but usually because I play everything through in my mind before I decide which way to go. When I decide what to eat for breakfast, it is because I have already planned lunch and dinner in my head. Kids do not allow that luxury. If someone is dangling upside from the fort, 6 feet off the ground, they need correction and help getting down immediately. When someone is strangling someone else with the wii-mote, instant reactions are required.


• Competing information. There are a lot of people out there who think they know the one way to raise a child. And I've probably read their book. But the truth is that each of my kids is really different and requires a slightly different approach. One child is entirely motivated by a desire to please. Another could care less about pleasing us as long as she has physical affection. We are still trying to figure out what motivates the little one. But the point is all of those theories are really different about how to raise your kids and they often are in opposition to each other.


• Playing. I'm a really serious person, admittedly too serious. I'm not good at playing. I wasn't even good at playing when I was a kid. Coming up with fun and being fun all the time wear me out. I'd really much rather read a book than play a game. I'd rather work in my garden than draw with sidewalk chalk. I find it exhausting to force myself into play.


• Significance. I believe that raising my kids is really important. In fact, I believe that it is so important that it brings out my need to be perfect. I want to do it right. I love these kids so deeply that I desperatly want to raise them to be the amazing people that I see in them. While I struggle along, I worry about messing them up or doing something wrong. My perfectionism can be paralyzing at times when I am so afraid of doing the wrong thing that I do nothing at all.

Being a SAHM is certainly the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life. It requires skills that I don't possess and strengths that mystify me.

What about you? What is challenging to you about parenting?

Missional Church

For the last 3 years, I have participated in conversation regarding the "Missional" church idea. At it's core, missional church is about engaging the world around the church for the intentional purpose of service. Missional church says that the church can no longer hide behind its walls or bury its head in the proverbial sand.

While I agree wholeheartedly that the church should be about engaging the world, I have long felt like some part of this idea didn't sit well with me. When you are part of a frenzy of new ideas and building momentum, it is hard to stop and name the misgiving. But, after 5 months of being introduced to and encouraged to practice contemplative prayer, those concerns have finally crystallized into words.

We are missing the heart.

Missional church, as I've seen it presented and defended, is all about action. It is motivated by our guilt at having ignored this call of Jesus for so long.

The heart of missional church should be that we have sat and listened to the heart of God and therefore been moved by God's love for the hurting and marginalized of our world. In other words, we have to formed to be like God in order to be motivated to bring God into the hurting people around us.

Too much of the missional conversation is all or nothing. "Your church is only missional if all you do minister to the poor." That sounds like Good Will to me, not the church. "Your church will die in 20 years of less if you don't go missional." Where in scripture do we encounter the idea tha that we are to live and react out of fear? Pendulum swing theology never fully captures the life of Christ being lived out in human beings. Instead, it reveals our deepest fear of fully surrendering the mysterious sovereignty of the One we claim to worship.

The truly missional church has spent time being formed into the image of Christ by being near the heart of God so that they are compelled by love and mercy to reach out to hurting people.

Have faith! God has sustained the church, in spite of it's many failings, for these many years in order to continue the mission of Redemption. I don't anticipate that nature changing any time soon.