Paradigms Shifting

Yesterday in church we were all asked one simple question: “How has your paradigm shifted?”

In other words, how did you used to think about something that you now see differently?

Rocky turned to me and said he thought parenting would suck; That he wouldn’t like being a parent, But, as it turns out, he really loves it. For me, well, I thought parenting, loving a child, would come more naturally. I thought that my motherly instinct would kick right in and it would be nearly impossible for me to not cherish my child and want to spend what I could of my life making their life better.

How laughable that seems now.

There is nothing like becoming a parent to put you face-to-face with your own selfishness. Nothing quite like being needed all the time to make you want to crawl under a rock or run away to escape, to just breathe. The love is there, for sure, but the energy? The unadulterated joy and delight? The living-for-every-moment excitement? Those are choices, not nature. And they’re not easy choices.

This question about paradigms shifting has forced me to confront my childhood in a new way. Relationships have been mended and hatchets have been buried, but what I’ve realized as a new mom is that parenting is hard. No other living species parents for life. No other species have to give so much for the survival, happiness and health of their offspring. Add to that the expectations of our culture, the cost of living, proximity to family, etc., and you’ve got yourself an extremely tough job under even tougher circumstances. I can’t imagine how much harder it would be if I was a single mom!

I spent so much of my childhood wanting more from my mom. More time. More love. More attention. More validation. I thought my mom should be who I wanted her to be. I was convinced that if you chose to have kids, your world should revolve around them. You shouldn’t go out with your friends, hire a babysitter, make your kids play outside on the weekends so that you could have a break. You should want to spend all your free time with them, playing with them, nurturing them, teaching them. In effect, if you wanted to be a parent, then your life should end until they turned 18 and you were free again.

As a kid, that is what I sincerely thought. Major center-of-the-universe complex. So self-centered and ignorant.

It makes me wonder if every kid has felt this way at one point or another. Sometimes I’m pretty certain that my kids must think this way by the things they say and do. It’s exhausting to even consider that these child-brained expectations could be true. I don’t think I would make it. I would surely run away. Escape. Disappear.

Which brings me to this.

Dear Mom,

I am so sorry that as a kid I thought your world should revolve around me. I am sorry that my age-appropriate ignorance and unreasonable expectations allowed so much resentment and unforgiveness to form against you in my younger years. I apologize for not realizing just how hard it is to be a mom. And for you, to be a dad, too, when there wasn’t anyone else. To have to work full-time (sometimes more than one job), to have to worry about finances because you were on your own, to have to live in a bad part of town because that’s all you could afford, to have to come home exhausted to do homework, and cook dinner, and clean the house, and make sure we were clean and warm. You did it all by yourself and I don’t know if I’ve ever said, “Thank you.” Thank you for working so hard to take care of us. Thank you for marrying a good man to be our dad. Thank you for not abandoning us even though things must have been so hard sometimes. Every time I feel exhausted, or disappointed, or annoyed, or angry, or resentful, or jealous, or overwhelmed, or any of those other tough emotions that come with being a mom, I remember that you must have felt them, too. And I am thankful that you stuck it out. And I’m thankful that I have you to lean on now. I love you.