The MOPS group at Corona Presbyterian became my sisterhood. The women I called on for last-minute babysitting, went out with for a rare dinner without families, and laughed with until Diet Coke came out my nose. I was following Julie’s lead to trust in grace and let others do the same. Julie was stepping down as the group’s coordinator. She needed someone to take over, and I agreed to help.
I sat on the stone hearth in front of the fireplace, the cool seeping through my pajama pants onto my outstretched legs. I felt like I was home in lots of ways. The women with me were my closest mothering friends. Some, like Cindy and Kathy, I’d met through the group, and others, like Jen and Crystal and Kristi, I’d recruited to join. We were on a summer retreat at my in-laws’ house, a half hour outside of Denver, but it may as well have been Mexico with the vacation-like quality of a night away from kids. We were planning the year ahead for the group of fifty or so moms we knew as our MOPS group. The living room was obviously familiar to me, my weekly getaway spot where Derek and the girls and I often got together with extended family for long weekend dinners. Sitting there, with it filled with the friends I’d prayed for those first months of motherhood, I felt God’s provision in their presence.
Earlier that day, when everyone arrived and saw their personalized clipboards and notebooks out waiting for them, Kathy turned to me. “How do you do it? You always have everything so together.” I thought of the hours put in to making goody bags, photocopying agendas, and planning meals. That performance side of me wanted to do it right for appearance’s sake. To show that I was capable, in control, put together. I was willing to get the details just so at the expense of my stress level. Derek did not have the pleasure of a peaceful wife the week leading up to the retreat.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” I said as I waved my hand at the table decorations, but Kathy’s comment gave me just what I was wanting: affirmation. Affirmation that I was good at other things besides doing dishes and wiping bottoms. I’d done plenty of other things in my pre-mothering days, but the last few years I’d been consumed with laundry and running errands to Home Depot. That year I’d sat on a committee for some changes at our local elementary school, but leading this MOPS group was my first time leading a team. Ever.
I put my glass down on the hearth and leaned in. We’d been doing a team-building exercise all day, taking turns telling our life stories. Hours earlier, we’d each taken a poster board and some markers and spread around the house for twenty minutes of alone time to make a life map of significant events in our lives. A visual of where we’d been and how that shaped who we’d become. Some showed topography with high and low elevation changes, others a winding path with stops along the way. Mine was the earth with lines showing a mess of back-and-forth stops between Europe and the United States, to Colorado and Portland and Colorado again.
The plan was that we’d each take fifteen minutes to share our stories between planning sessions. But how does one sum up her life in fifteen minutes? One person’s fifteen minutes bled into an hour.
So there we were after dinner, pajama clad, settling in for more stories.
“Pass her the Kleenex,” I whispered to Crystal, who was sitting next to Kathy.
It was inevitable with each one that the tears would start flowing. Going back to places in memory where we hadn’t been in years. Realizing how it was impacting us today. We said things like:
“I didn’t realize how close to the surface this was.”
“I haven’t thought about that in years.”
“I don’t want my kids to have to go through that too.”
And that’s when it struck me: we were all talking about pains from somewhere in our childhood. They must be an inevitable part of life, of parenting, that hurt—those valleys, those low points, are unavoidable. The realization that I wasn’t alone felt hopeful. Being raised by imperfect people is a universal experience. And seeing how we all had grown as a result of those painful experiences made me appreciate them in a new way. Many of my good qualities stemmed from things that were difficult in the moment.
“We better start saving for our kids’ therapy now,” I said, “because they’ll certainly be blaming us for something when they’re our age.”
My short fuse the day before flashed in my mind.
“Gabi, put these things away,” I’d snapped as I threw toys into their baskets in her room.
She stood frozen, staring at me.
“Come on. Move!” Was English not her first language? Did she not see I was trying to clean up?
The snapping came with more intensity and faster than I would have liked. And it was frequently my reaction. Maybe she won’t remember, I thought. She’s still only four. But I knew that wasn’t the point. I wanted to raise her in an environment of love, and instead I was getting stressed about toys on the floor and acting like the mess was a personal attack. But if it was true that my imperfection as a mother was inevitable, how did I balance what I wanted with what I could realistically offer?
Any confidence I’d had from pulling the details of the day together was now shadowed by the guilt of falling short with my kids.
I looked around the room at the others in my grown-up slumber party. Makeup cried off, hair pulled back in sloppy buns, most barefoot, and some even pregnant.
“How do we do this?” I asked. What “this” was, I wasn’t completely sure. This life with its topography of ups and downs. How do we manage to keep pressing forward, dragging our baggage behind us? How do we help each other through it? How do we mother, knowing we will make mistakes? Mistakes that would certainly impact our kids?
Kathy wiped her wet cheeks with a tissue, looked at me, and waited for me to answer my own question.
“I don’t know,” she finally said. “Pray, I guess. Isn’t Jesus always the right answer in Sunday school?”
I didn’t know either, but I supposed she was right. I was a mess. Despite my efforts to be slow to anger, I was falling short all over the place. All I could do was pray. For patience. For grace. To remember grace had already been extended by the grace giver. He was the right answer. The best I could do was expect my own imperfection, offer grace to others, and hope they would do the same for me.