Spoiler Alert: You're not REALLY a Mom

I must warn you before you continue reading.  Proceeding may cause irreversible damage to the way you see yourself when you look in the mirror, or at least try to look in a mirror that is smudged with handprints and water splotches.    But if you consider yourself among the brave, the courageous, continue on, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

You are not really a mom.  It is a lie, a myth now debunked.  You . . . are you ready for this?  You are actually a reporter.

Yep.  That’s right.  All good reporters know they must drop everything they are doing as soon as a story arises, whether it is good, bad, or ugly.  And they must run to the scene of the crime, be in the middle of the action so they can get the story, the full story.  And you, my fellow mother friend, do just this.  Your stories are created by the angels and monsters, depending on the day, who live and breathe and somehow really did come from you.

And we all know a good reporter cannot simply stop there.  She must continue on to report.  And report is what I do all day long.  I report to my husband’s initials on my caller id.  I report to the frantic screams from the child who’s being chased with a dart gun.  I report to the dishes, the laundry, the bills, the yard, and the list goes on and on and on.  But most importantly, and I think you’ll agree, there is one thing I report to numerous times a day that keeps my life halfway on track.  Without it, I am totally lost, as are my kids who will never end up at school with the appropriate necessities if I fail to report here.  And not only must I report once a day, but hour after hour, because the list on that report is so long, and my memory so fried from motherhood, that I’ll forget important things like Katie’s friend’s birthday party or Caleb’s snack leader day or Nate’s swimming trunks for his PBIS party. 

So if you’re still confused, go check your calendar, report to it, because you probably failed to do so first thing this morning, and so now you don’t realize today was the day you were supposed to reinstall your mind before proceeding with the day’s activities.

When I report to my calendar, I see a plethora of events, responsibilities, activities.  Most of them, if I really think about it, are actually quite trivial in the big scheme of life.  But there is one activity I list on there that never fails to have lasting impact.  Camping.

Maybe your calendar doesn’t say camping.  But I hope it occasionally says something that denotes you intentionally setting aside time to have fun with your family.  Life is busy, as our calendars so clearly relay, but life should never be so busy for us to fail to make memories with our children.

I remember camping with my grandparents very well.  My grandpa died 8 years ago.  My grandma died 4 days ago.  And as we laid them to rest, memories flooded over like a sea of joy.  My grandparents understood the importance of family, and they took time to simply be with us.  In an ever-increasingly, speed-of-lightning paced world, it is hard.  I know.  But I also know I didn’t stand at my grandma’s casket and remember fondly all the dishes she washed, all the laundry she folded, or all the bills she paid.  I remember all the love she showed when she simply spent time to connect with me on a very personal level.

Connect.  We all know in our minds that we need to connect with our children, especially as calendars fill to the brim.  But do we really know the lasting legacy we leave?  When our children are called to also become reporters, reporting on the events of our lives and the memories we left them with as we go on to meet our maker, how impacting will their story about us be?

I want my story to be one to write home about.  I want the pages of my life to fill them even after I’m gone.  I believe as moms, we all want this.  But somehow, we report too much to the trivial and not enough to the treasured.  So we must stop in the midst of that story of chaos, and pursue a better story, one that will make headlines for years to come, a story to write at home about.