Fretting and being a mum...

I had moment today, not one of the ‘lock myself in the closet and scream’ moments. A rare moment when God pulls back a little of the wrapping paper and I get a glimpse of the gift He has for me, for my girls, my family.

I would be a gold medallist in the sport of fretting over my kids. Most of my brain cells are on a loop, day and night, calculating and mapping, worrying about my 2 girls. I worry that we are giving them too much freedom and then I worry we are holding them too close. I worry about the friends they make and then I fret that they might be lonely. I could go on and list more but you would get bored with the trivial nature of my thought patterns. I guess the moment I held my screaming new born in my arms, I inherently believed that I was going to make a royal mess of this parenting thing, I mean, I could hardly look after myself.

My mother was only just 21 when she gave birth to me. Pregnant out of wedlock, in apartheid South Africa. Getting pregnant when you weren’t married was nearly as bad as murder. My father’s family begrudgingly accepted my mother into their fold, mind you only after the vows were exchanged. She always carried the shadow of the shame, the stain of sex before marriage. Can I just point out now that the product of that shame was me, little old me. I know that my mother worried about us, all the time. The family pointed out to her often that she was too strict, that she was too this, too that. I remember her crying often about how she could never be enough. She suffered from post-natal depression, she got ill, hospital ill. She struggled to manage her strong emotions, living with her was like living in the eye of a tornado, you knew you were ok but if the wind changed even the slightest, then chaos erupted.

But she loved me. She loved, loved, loved, loved me and my brother and my sister.

What was my moment then? It was this. As my mother sat nursing me in the hot, humid South African air and dreamed of who I might become, she could not have seen me walking in the cool, spring air in England 42 years later. She could not have seen that I would know love and peace so strong that it takes my breath away.

I am not sure she understood that God had my life all mapped out before she even met my father. Oh, God knew about the bad choices I would make and still make, the roads that became really long and rocky because of them. He knew the tears, the pain we would endure as a family. He knew I would cry, holding onto my daughter as she suffered, raging against her own illness. It is mystery to me how God always works things for the good of those that love him. And how He always carries me through.

My moment? I suddenly understood that my life is so much more than my mother could have dreamt, filled with so much joy despite the hard times- all her anxiety about getting it right and about my poor choices was wasted time and energy- I was held by the One that created me, held every moment. And so are my girls. I shouldn’t waste another moment trying to worry things better for them. The One that created them has it covered.