Making A Difference

Disclaimer: I am not writing this blog post to elicit encouragement or praise. I've actually posted it to this blog (instead of my other one) because it is more of a personal essay that I wanted to share with those who know me - and love me - best. Thanks for listening (or reading, I guess).

There are too many days that end with me sitting on the bed as day passes into night and I look around me and see what can only be described as the remains of the day. No matter how many times I picked up or didn't pick up, no matter how many dishes I did or didn't wash, no matter how many clothes I folded and put away, I'm still surrounded by a mess, by the daily clutter of six people - four of them small - and my general inability to keep up with them.

Surrounded by the visual evidences of my little failures, I pause to reflect on the day as the four small people I love so well sleep peacefully in their beds - for now. I think about how I should've been more patient, how I shouldn't have lost my temper, how I should've found time for each one of my kids so that before they went to bed they knew that Mom loved them today. Sitting, pausing, contemplating in my mess, it seems that it is only symbolic of the mess that maybe isn't as visible but is still just as important.

Which then leads me onward to the laundry list (no pun intended) of things I should do. Things I should do not because my church or my culture tell me to, but because they are good things, important things, things that would probably make me happier, make me more successful and less inclined to ponder my mess while sitting in my mess. They are things I think we all struggle with - at least the mommy blog world tells me so. But even that knowledge doesn't really help me with the fact that on some days, on most days, I feel like I'm losing the struggle.

But then, Heavenly Father is mindful of me, as He always is. And while there are many who seem to make His tender mercies into a cliche or a happy ending that is only for the blessed, there are moments when I feel the "sweet and calm assurance that He cares."

Tonight, after a long day in the trenches of motherhood when the mess is deeper than usual, I came to my computer just hoping. Not even aware of what I was hoping for, but just hoping. I opened up my email, and, as is my custom, checked the junk mail before dumping it in the cyber trash. In it was an email from a person I don't know and have never met. He'd found my website (which hasn't been updated in three years) and it turns out we are family - a fact he discovered when he googled a family name and was directed to the family history I posted on the website three years ago.

In that moment, the whispering came. It was small at first and if I had not been hoping for it, I probably would have missed it. But in that moment, I felt the quiet stirring of the spirit remind me that what I am doing is making a difference.

Then, as I glanced past the piles of laundry waiting for me on the floor, my eyes caught a statue I bought long ago of a mother holding a baby. And the whisper came again. What you are doing is making a difference.

The struggle is real. So are my failings at it. But Heavenly Father - in His mercy - has sent me kids who will weather their mother's failings, I know because I have seen it. They are forgiving and kind and they offer me each day the chance to do it better, the chance to do it right. They are so much like Heavenly Father in that way. We are all of us failing in one way or another, but Heavenly Father doesn't get angry, He doesn't throw up His hands in frustration and ask us why, He doesn't give up on us. He comes in those moments only a parent can find when our hearts are open and soft (sometimes because they are broken) and He pours in a measure of His spirit and reminds us again that He loves us, that mistakes are part of how we learn, and He has a plan - has always had a plan - for overcoming them.

So tonight, as one day fades into another, as life continues to move and change around me, I am grateful for a loving Father in Heaven, for the little mess-makers in my life that lead me ever back to Him, and for all the "sweet and calm assurances that He cares."

Pondering,
Meredith