{"id":1620,"date":"2013-07-17T06:45:14","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T13:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/?p=1620"},"modified":"2013-07-17T06:45:14","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T13:45:14","slug":"why-your-kids-dont-need-a-supermama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/2013\/07\/17\/why-your-kids-dont-need-a-supermama\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Your Kids don\u2019t Need a SuperMama"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Ann Voskamp
\nwww.aholyexperience.com<\/p>\n

When one of the boys pulls off his Sunday shoes, the filthy ones ridiculously still clinging to \u201cSunday Shoes\u201d status, he catches my eye and grins like he\u2019s swallowed a canary.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I only wore one sock to church.\u201d<\/p>\n

What are you going to do but laugh with the grinning kid?<\/p>\n

Yeah, I am that Mom\u2026<\/p>\n

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Yeah, after 18 years, there it is:<\/p>\n

I have been the mama who\u2019s punished when I needed to\u00a0pray<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s hollered at kids when I needed to\u00a0help<\/em>\u00a0kids.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s lunged forward \u2014 when I should have\u00a0leaned on Jesus<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There are dishes stacked on the counter like memories and paint smeared on the table and there are kids sprawled on the couch trying to read the same book at the same time \u2014 and\u00a0there is only so much time.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

I never expected love to be like this. I never expected so much joy. I never expected to get so much wrong. It\u2019s what my Mama\u2019s said to me a thousand times if she\u2019s said it to me once. \u201cIt\u2019s not that you aren\u2019t going to get things wrong \u2014 it\u2019s what you do with it afterward.\u201c<\/p>\n

So you clear off the table and the dishes and the leftover spinach leaves and wash the paint fingerprint off the mess of chairs, and you pick up the socks and shoes strewn through the house like crusty droppings in the park.<\/p>\n

And then you swing from the monkey bars in the almost dark with the kids almost grown and you pray that your post-half-a-dozen-babies bladder doesn\u2019t give way leaky on you now, and you laugh so loud you hope they always remember.<\/p>\n

There is still light.<\/p>\n

There is hospitality<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0making space inside of you to be a safe place for a child.<\/p>\n

And no matter how the craziness of this whole parenting thing all turns out:\u00a0The reward of loving is in the loving; loving is itself the great outcome of loving.\u00a0The success of loving is in how\u00a0we change<\/em>\u00a0because we kept on loving \u2013 regardless of any thing else changing.<\/em><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s a relief, how hanging upside down on the monkey bars, things can come to you.<\/p>\n

That maybe\u00a0being the mama I want to be isn\u2019t so much about\u00a0being<\/em>\u00a0more, but\u00a0trusting more<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 \u00a0trusting<\/em>more in the God of Hagar and Ruth and Hannah, the God who sees the angst, who nourishes the empty places, who hears the unspoken cries \u2014 \u00a0and answers<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That godly parenting isn\u2019t ultimately about\u00a0rules<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 but having a\u00a0relationship<\/em>\u00a0with an ultimate God and His children.<\/p>\n

That godly parenting isn\u2019t \u00a0fuelled by my efforts \u2014 but by God\u2019s grace.<\/p>\n

That if I make God first and am\u00a0most<\/em>\u00a0satisfied in His love \u2014 then I\u2019m released to love my children fully and satisfactorily.<\/p>\n

That maybe it all comes down to this:<\/p>\n

My kids don\u2019t need to see a Super Mama.<\/p>\n

They need to see a Mama who needs a Super God.<\/p>\n

Right to the last of the light, into the last of the light, there\u2019s this silhouette of a mother running free and barefoot with the kids, no socks at all.<\/p>\n

This grace on ground like this.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Ann Voskamp www.aholyexperience.com When one of the boys pulls off his Sunday shoes, the filthy ones ridiculously still clinging to \u201cSunday Shoes\u201d status, he catches my eye and grins like he\u2019s swallowed a canary. \u201cSo I only wore one sock to church.\u201d What are you going to do but laugh with the grinning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,71,80,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-burn-out","category-just-for-fun","category-single-parents","category-special-needs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1620"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1623,"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1620\/revisions\/1623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arkansashomeschool.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}