The Marathon of Motherhood

I love sprinting but I have yet to fall in love with running. My husband who played soccer most of his life, however, is a natural runner. I, however, have to repeatedly push myself, look forward and not behind, and aim for my next goal. Unlike a marathon, sprinting sounds so much more fun: give it all I have for a shorter distance trying to beat my last best time. Sounds great! But I know it’s the longer distance, the longer harder push where I get stronger both physically and mentally. 

My desire to run faster for shorter distances is a great example of how I often want to experience things in life: fast and fun and on to the next thing. I know that this is not always a healthy outlook. Life is all about the process, the time in between the next adventure and the next season. A very large portion of our life we spend… waiting. We spend a lot of time waiting actually. Waiting is hard. Waiting is not sexy and many more times than I would like to admit has left me feeling like life in full will happen once the thing I have been waiting on occurs. The college, the degree, the job, the promotion, the husband, the baby, the vacation, and the list always goes on…

The Marathon of Motherhood

Unlike running, as a mom goals of the day are often a whole lot less concrete but the principles still apply. You will often need to push yourself (hello! all moms get that!!), keep your view forward while remaining present, and aim for new wins (despite how small they feel).

A couple of goals to not overlook that are huge wins: don’t allow mommy guilt to steal your joy and do your best and feel good about it despite how your child(ren) reacts.

On-the-Job Training 

I have heard it said: “Motherhood is the marathon I did not train for.” How could we? How could we prepare for something so truly amazing, life-altering, and unlike anything we could ever truly imagine? There was no way to fully prepare for this race. No amount of reading or talking to our tribe would totally prepare us.

This job called mommy is mostly on-the-job training. This is why it is normal that many of us have felt like we are not doing this mommy thing right. And that’s what it’s all about: our child(ren) as a wonderful blessing was given to us to parent and in doing so we will learn and grow WITH them. We see our little(s) growing up before us but it’s much harder to see our growth. But mama we are growing! 

Motherhood is messy. Motherhood is beautiful. It is the beauty of the mess of the day (or the 5pm marathon feeling of “it never ends”) where we are growing to be more loving, patient, and an even more amazing woman and mom!