When Motherhood Feels Overwhelming: Finding Hope in the Hard Days

I almost didn’t do a post this week because, I’ll be honest, I didn’t feel as if I had anything profound to say – and I didn’t want to admit how hard Motherhood has been for me. But as I scroll through my Instagram feed (away from the house because I kept bursting into tears so my wonderful husband sent me away to take a break), the posts that I stop on are the ones that address the hardships of life. When you feel alone. When you aren’t handling things well. When it feels like God is far away. When you don’t know where to go from here.

And that makes me feel more awful because from all accounts, motherhood should be counted a blessing, not a hardship – and it is something that so many people want and haven’t been able to have. Why do I struggle so much with it? Just how selfish am I? But at the same time, I realized that what I appreciate about those posts is the raw honesty that helps me remember how many humans struggle with the same emotions, no matter what the circumstance. So this is me, being raw and honest.

Motherhood has been hard for me. And I finally pinpointed at least one reason while reading Risen Motherhood by Emily Jensen and Laura Wifler – it is the lack of control in my life. I’m used to having control (more or less). And not being able to control my schedule, when I’ll have free time, how long I am able to write or work on social media or my numerous side projects, not knowing how much sleep I’ll get on a given night…for a Type A/Enneagram 1 person like me, it has been a whole new level of figuring out how to cope.

There are many good moments. When Flynn curls into my chest. When he stares wide-eyed at me…or at the wall of pictures behind me, discovering the world around him. When he grins. When he coos. When he holds a conversation of various noises with me. When I marvel at the miracle of his tiny hands and fingers. And then there are the hard times. When he refuses to sleep even though he’s exhausted. When he finally goes to sleep but then proceeds to wake every fifteen minutes. Not being able to have caffeine (on the off chance it is affecting his sleep). When he sleeps for four hours and I have to go make sure he’s alive multiple times because I can’t stop worrying about him. When he goes through spurts of needing to nurse every hour (and gets upset if I so much as pick up my phone while he does so). When he’s crying and I can’t figure out why and my heart breaks a little. When he’s been fussing so long that I have to walk away because I can’t handle it anymore. When he’s taking a nap and I don’t know if I’ll have three minutes or 2 hours to do…well, anything.

When I do have two hours and it feels like I barely tapped the barrel of my to-do list. I mean seriously, do I clean the house? Run errands? Do I work on my book? On my platform? On my board responsibilities for ACFW Virginia? On developing the speaking courses I want to do? On devotions as I feel simultaneously resentful that God didn’t help Flynn sleep better last night and a desperate need for a renewed relationship with Him?

And when I remember that this balance that is so beyond me is something I’ll be figuring out for the next 16-18 years, I could collapse under the weight of it. On one level, it feels strangely natural. As if it is the most normal thing in the world to be caring for a baby, nursing, pumping, dressing him, changing him. As if it was something I was meant to do. But on another level, the realization that not just caring for him, but worrying over his well-being is going to be forever is something I don’t know if I can handle.

Here’s where I want to write something trite – something I know I should say about focusing in on God’s strength. Drawing near to Him, and making time to pray and read my Bible, and everything will come into focus. But the truth is, even though my brain knows that’s where I should go, it doesn’t always help. It still feels impossible, and sometimes God feels impossibly far away.

So, I suppose, instead, this is where I need to go back to my brand – my whole reason for Forest Idylls is finding those moments of hope in a forest of hardship. It doesn’t take away the forest, or the path that you are stumbling through, but it helps makes it bearable. Do you know why hope is my brand? Because I struggle with it so much myself. I don’t talk about hope because finding hopeful moments is something I’m good at – I talk about it because it is such a constant struggle for me. So even though I still feel like I am figuring out my way through a forest right now, here are my Forest Idyll moments for the past week that help me spot the light through the trees:

• Flynn’s almost laugh when I was washing spit-up off his swimsuit
• The way he curled his hands together while sucking avidly on a bottle
• The sunshine on our walk today
• The delighted grin Flynn gave me after I went to pick him up when he started crying last night
• The story of Job on Flynn’s audio Bible Reader last night, reminding me of God’s presence even when things are at their worst (which they certainly aren’t for me, as that story reminded me!)
• The way my husband held me while I cried today (meaning the day I wrote this), and then gently, but firmly, sent me away to get my work done while he watched Flynn, reminding me I am not alone in this

What are some Forest Idyll moments you had this week?