By LIBBO CROSSWHITE
Ramblings of a tired mama
I’ve drummed my fingers over the keyboard three or four times in the last week in an attempt to capture all that I have learned recently. An impossible task in a year of abundant questions and far fewer answers.
Lately, I find myself as the frantic note-taker of my own life — seeking and, thankfully, resting in the promises God has laid before me. I’m tired. Are you tired? Not like a “shouldn’t have watched that extra episode” tired, but soul-tired. The type of tired that can be remedied only by resting in the Word of God and reminding myself that I don’t have to have everything figured out on this side of heaven.
I keep looking through my notes and ramblings from this season of confusion, and sorting through so many emotions. Isn’t that a beautiful picture of motherhood? I’m reminded of these truths that God has whispered on my heart through scripture and through others:
● We have scripture to show us how the story will end.
● May my prayers be filled with less anxiety (“what if”) and more confidence (“even if”)
● God, bring me hope. Hope is a confident expectation that the future is in God’s hands. Will you trust God? Say “amen” to God with your life, not just your mouth. Why? Because He is faithful, He is with you, and ultimately, He is in control. Stay strong in hope, fall into hope, and rise in hope.
Those are ramblings, but they are Spirit-filled reminders.
I struggled for too long searching for purpose and meaning in my career, my motherhood, and my existence. It wasn’t until I began to seek the Ultimate Source that I began to understand where I could find truth.
My mom printed this poem and left it on my desk on a particularly hard day. The poem is a reminder to trust in the slow work as much as I do in the big moments. It’s been at the core of who I am as a mother this year:
“Patient Trust”
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability —
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually — let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ (1881-1955)
God is using my son, Russell, to remind me to slow down from the start of my day. Carpool can be an anxiety-ridden time, and I have seen the worst of myself in line, running late and being stubborn about letting others cut in front. How old am I? Twelve years old, at most.
Every morning in the carpool line, Russell takes no less than three minutes to get all of his things together, put his mask on, get out of the car, and pick up whatever he has left behind. Every morning. Regardless of how loud or frantic me and Mary yell at him. He’s not fazed; he doesn’t see the line of cars behind us; he’s just doing him.
I think God is reminding me each day of the same truth:
Slow. Down. Trust Me. I’ve got this.
He reminds us over and over in His word, but never more clearly than in Matthew 11:28-30:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Freedom in Him. Freedom in the slowness of God’s will. Joy in the unknown. That’s what Christ offers us, and it’s what the world so desperately needs.
Libbo Haskins Crosswhite and her husband, Clay, live in Madison and attend Pinelake. They have one daughter, Mary Thomas, who is 6 years old, and a son, Russell, who is 4 years old. She is the high school guidance counselor at Madison- Ridgeland Academy and can be emailed at lcrosswhite@mrapats.org.
