The Dirt that Lies Beneath: Installment 2

The Real Dirt

The truth is I feel like a failure most days as a parent.

Now, before you go saying a bunch of positive things you don’t mean, let me explain.

Information has been kept from me. Vital information I could have used on a daily basis as a mom. I was green you guys. GREEN as a blade of grass, a dollar bill or the Grinch. I mean, I had no clue. The best part? I was really good at faking it. I mean, I could successfully breastfeed and eat spaghetti at the same time. I could talk on a corded phoned (do I need to insert a picture of that?) while I changed a poopy diaper. I could fold laundry and rock a cradle. I could fix dinner while rocking a cranky baby to sleep.

And I was frustrated the entire time. For a long time I didn’t enjoy being a young momma. I was so overwhelmed. I cried a lot. And those babies- they just kept coming. We had 4 kids by the time we were married for 8 years. Please, let me do the math for you.

1993, baby boy #1.

1995, baby girl #1

1997 baby boy #2

1999 baby by #3

This equals 4 kids in 7 years. FOUR of them. I was always outnumbered. Even with an amazing, hardworking husband, I was completely out of my league with this entire stay at home mom gig. Sometimes I don’t know how we survived it. I may still need some therapy.

I may still need some therapy.

Survival of the fittest is my joke when I talk about having four kids, but the truth is, it’s no joke. This is the dirt of my younger days that on occasion haunts me still. This is the stuff that life is made of. It’s where my kids learned to be loyal to one another. It is also where they learned expletives and how to shove everything under their bed in less than five minutes because company was coming over in ten, and I needed the rest of the house picked up.  These “formative years” we read books, learned to write our names and played in the dirt.

There it is again.

The dirt.

We all start out so innocent, yet we always return somehow to the dirt we came from. For kids that age, it was in the playing, the falling down and the getting back up. The way they learned what “no” meant, and how they learned about hurt feelings in the backyard.  They also figured out when you call nine-one-one,  a nice officer comes to the door, and she isn’t happy when she finds out the call was because the goldfish crackers were spilled everywhere and someone was in big trouble. (all while mommy was in the shower for three minutes) Incidentally, that was the longest shower I took for several years.

The dirt showed my children how to get messy, then find redemption in the water hose, washing all the mess away and down the street. It showed them how the blades of freshly cut grass could cover their feet one minute, and be traveling down a small river to the street the next, picking up more grass and leaves and debris in their path. Washed in the water, cleansed by the hose.

Just like Jesus does to my soul every time I think I am a failure as a parent. There is so much more to this part of my dirty story- this is just the beginning. We still need to talk about all those things I could have been warned about, yet- silence.

The dirt taught me to grow things, like our children, into adults who can be independent. It started out with dirty shoelaces and all that tying practice. It ended up with me being a Mimi to some precious babies, that belong to my babies. Three with us and one already waiting for us on streets of gold, no doubt holding onto Jesus smiling at our dirt being washed away every time we come before him.  The dirt has become a sweet perfume as I grow into motherhood, after almost 24 years of practice.