My Personal Pond

I remember being about 12 years old and spending time at my friends pig farm out in Friend, Nebraska. We dressed up in these long dresses and were re-enacting scenes from Anne of Green Gables. We rode bikes down gravel roads and found a pond to swim in. I went into the pond first and I sunk up to my ankles in the mud. As I tried to turn around to get out of the pond I went from laughing over the situation to beginning stage of fear. I was sinking fast and at mid-calf down in the mud I panicked. My friend was standing on the shore only a few feet away from me. She was laughing and laughing at me or the situation. I couldn't move in the mud. It was slow and hard and I was scared. I remember crying. They weren't wailing tears, but tears filled with determination that I was getting out of there. I didn't want to be alone in that pond while she went for help! I don't remember much of anything else, except pushing my bike back to her house, because my legs were too sore!

"I'm neck deep." A friend, who is also a mother of four, shared this line with me this week. It accurately describes where I am at these days as a mother. Motherhood is the pond. A pretty little pool of water in the middle of a great expanse of open fields. It sits out there all alone in random places. You expect pond water to be dirty. There aren't too many stories of crystal clear ponds! You don't know if  swimming in the pond will be refreshing, you enter with the uncertainty of what you might encounter, you don't know if you will sink a little or a lot. Will you have friends on the side of the pond laughing with you, encouraging you when you hit that panic moment, running for help when you need it? Motherhood is like the pond! Some seasons we will only have mud stuck between our toes and other times we will be stuck in mud so deep we are set into a tailspin of fear. 

I have learned in the last 'almost' 9 years of being a mother, that I want to be the friend that is encouraging my friends with what I know they need to hear when they are stuck in the mud. As women we have the power to make another woman feel like she can conquer her fears. On the flip side, it doesn't take much to make her feel like she is doing everything wrong in her quest to get out of the mud. 

The rewards of motherhood is painfully slow. I comment often that the weeks and years go too fast. But, the reward of my labor is so far away it makes it hard to not give up. It makes the weeks where I'm 'neck deep' in the mud feel so heavy that the life is taken out of me...I'm too tired to ride my bike home! 
Even if my friend would have gone for help when I was stuck in that muddy pond, I'm sure I would have had to get out of that pond on my own. Maybe someone would have laid down a board, but I would have still had to get my feet and legs out of the mud and stepped up. 

God knows the future of each of my children. He also chose me to be their mother. He picked this family for each of them. So, when the mud is up to my neck, I can hear the voice of God reminding me of these things. I can shed tears, but that inner stubborn determination that God gave me, well it comes pouring up. It is a slow process, but I will get out! 

Then I will look back and remember brief moments from being stuck, but as with every situation we are given in life...I will use it to learn. I will share it as an encouragement to other mothers. Or what I'm finding as I've gotten older, is my past situations are my own personal encouragement. Remember the past so we don't repeat our mistakes in the future! Learn from our past. Remember how God protected, provided, gave, brought me through so many things in the past fifteen to twenty years. Then use the past to propel you forward!

 I found a quote on a wall hanging from Hobby Lobby. The fact it is one of those popular chalk drawings in the way it is written just meant I HAD to have it! The quote is exactly what everyone one of needs to see hanging in our kitchen...
"because when you stop and look around this life is pretty amazing" 
Now, to get this line deep into the core of each of my children! Slow process, but big reward!

Schram State Park