I'm Having a Martha Moment

Go, go, go.  Do, do more, you're still not doing enough.  Get it all done, and do it seamlessly.  Be organized in every aspect of your life.  Discipline your child to be the most well-mannered and well behaved kid on the block.   Your two year old is whining and not listening to you in public?  You poor dear.  It's a shame that means he won't succeed later on in life.  Get all the laundry done and put away.  Heaven forbid there's a few loads that sit in the basket for a while.  Keep the kitchen immaculate at all times, even when you're cooking.  Dirty dishes sitting in the sink?  (Gasp.)  The shame.  Always say yes when you're asked to do something, even if you do have to create an extra hour in the day to get it done.  I mean, if you say no, then what would people think?  Don't take time to do anything fun for yourself.  You really should be doing something productive instead.  Always.  Decide to take a break anyway?  Well, then you should at least feel guilty about it.  The house?  Well, it must always, always be clean.  After all, you never know when someone might drop by.  You don't want them thinking you do nothing all day when they see the dust and dog hair, do you?  Be everywhere at once.  Be everything to everyone.   C'mon, that's easy.  I mean, you are superwoman, right?

Okay moms, have you ever felt this way?  Maybe you're not even a mom at all, but you feel these pressures to be all things to all people at all times--and to be perfect at all of it.  For me, struggling with this is nothing new that started with the birth of my son.  Sheesh.  What is it with us women?  Why do we think this way?  Why do we set ourselves up for failure like this?  The immense pressures and expectations of being perfect women and the impossible to-do lists that we hold over our heads daily are eating away at us.  If we can't live up to these expectations and get it all done, then does that mean that we are failures?  If I'm not a shiny little, squeaky clean, always-smiling, never-stopping, go-til-I-drop super woman, then there must be something wrong with me.  Tell me, people, is this the truth?  Nope.  It's a big fat lie, and it's not from God.

I had a particularly hard week last week fighting against these feelings.  As a mom I was feeling (and am still struggling not to feel) like I was a big fat failure.  It was one of those weeks where my two year old son acted like the epitome of what you think of when you think of a two year old.  If there was ever any question about why they call it "the terrible two's", then all one would have had to do was to come to my house this past week and see it in action.  I love my son more than I could even express here in words.  But, some days, it is hard being a mom!  We dealt with everything that week--whining (oh, the whining), being aggressive towards other children, not sharing, not accepting no, throwing fits, an embarrassing grocery store incident (moms--you know what I'm talking about), and being disrespectful.  No matter what I did, nothing worked.  I was doubting my abilities and gifts as a mother.  I thought that it surely had something to do with what I was not doing.  Maybe if I just did this or that, then everything would be better.

Then God gave me a little grace.  God gave me exactly what I needed--my friend Marty.  An experienced Mom with two children in college, her first-born son and my son are like carbon copies of one another.  When she tells stories about her son when he was preschool-aged, it's like I'm listening to myself talk about my life.  I know she knows what it's like to raise a strong-willed but incredibly loving and amazing little boy.  She has come out of it on the other side, and her child who kept her constantly on her toes testing, testing, and testing some more is now a very responsible, caring, respectful, strong, level-headed, smart young man who would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it.  She had the perspective that I needed.  Sometimes God places people in my life at just the right moments.  Do you know what I mean?  What started out as just a quick conversation in the hallway of our church ended up to be a holy moment.  God was using her, and she probably didn't even know how much.  The thing that struck me the most was when she said, "Jenni, you're being too hard on yourself."  This statement brought tears to my eyes.  It was just what I needed to hear.  It felt freeing --like God was giving me permission to just relax and stop beating myself up so much.  Just stop.  Take a breath.  Calm down.

Through all this, my mind keeps coming back to another very busy woman I know named Martha.  She is a woman of good intentions.  She is known for being hospitable, productive, a loving sister, loyal to her friends, a woman of unwavering faith, a planner, and a do-er.  She seems like she has it all together.  Okay, I have to admit that I don't exactly know Martha personally, but I feel like I do.  She actually lived a very long time ago, way before my time--a little over 2000 years ago to be exact.  A couple of important guys named Luke and John wrote about her in a book called The Bible.

Let's be honest, Martha has gotten a bad wrap from the Church for the past 2000 plus years.  We lump her in there with Thomas, poor guy.  We have forgotten all her good qualities.  Or maybe we just overlook them completely.  How can we forget, after all, that she was one of Jesus' closest and most loyal friends.  When her beloved brother Lazarus died, Jesus came to visit and comfort her and her sister (John 11:17-20).  She told Jesus that she knew he could have healed her brother when he was sick if he had only arrived sooner.  She pushed her faith even further when she told him that he could still heal Lazarus and raise him from the dead if he wanted to (John 11:21-22).  Now that is some astounding faith!  When Jesus responded by asking her if she believed that he was the "resurrection and the life", she did not doubt and agreed whole heartedly that he was the Christ (John  11:23-37).  Jesus ended up granting her request, and afterwards, she hosted a dinner, in which Jesus was the guest of honor.  What a wonderful way to show her gratitude.  But even before all this happened, she had a good relationship with Jesus.  Before Lazarus fell ill, when he and his disciples were passing through Bethany, Luke says that "a woman named Martha opened her home to him" (Luke 10:38).  I don't know about you, but opening up my home to thirteen dirty, traveling strangers would not be high up on my list of things to do, but it was for Martha.  She had a true, loving servant's heart.

But, I must mention that there were qualities in Martha which got her in trouble.  She, like so many of us women, had a very hard time slowing down.  The way she saw it, there was always something to do to prepare for something else.  She had to have the cleanest house and the best cooked meal.  She had to be the hostess with the mostess, and she was just plain too hard on herself.  When she opened her home to Jesus and his disciples when they passed through her home town, she missed out on the special moments with Jesus.  While her sister Mary "sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said", "Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made" (Luke 10:39-40a).  In fact, Martha even gets frustrated that Mary isn't helping with the hostessing duties and tells Jesus to get her to start doing more (Luke 10:40b).  But, Jesus' response is golden...

"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.  Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."  

He very well could have been saying, "Jenni, Jenni...you are worried and upset about many things..."  Or he could have been talking to any one of us women who are constantly doing and going...

What is that "one thing" that is needed that he talks about?  What was it that Mary chose that was better?  Jesus was Jewish, and he grew up learning and devoting himself to the Jewish scriptures.  He was referring to Psalm 27.  In verse 4 it says,

One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek:  that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life.

Even after hearing this, Martha still struggled.  Just before Passover, Jesus came to Bethany again, and Martha planned a dinner in honor of him.  During the dinner she is described as the one who "served".  Her brother Lazarus and her sister Mary, on the other hand, chose to spend their time with Jesus that night.  Mary even anointed Jesus' feet and wiped them with her hair in the famous story that parallels him being prepared for his burial (John 12:1-3).  Martha missed out!

I truly believe that all of Martha's going and doing came from an absolute place of love and good intentions.  But, the message got lost in translation.  All Jesus wanted was for her to stop what she was doing and just sit and be with him.  That's all.  But, her anxiety got the best of her, and it's getting the best of me as well.  Martha, I think we're cut out of the same cloth.

What about the Proverbs 31 woman?  Was she a Martha or a Mary?  Well, I think she probably had the best qualities of both.  She was like Martha in that she provided a wonderful home for her family.  She took care of her family and friends and showed her love to them by her steadfast actions.  But instead of being too busy to soak in her Lord's presence, I think the Proverbs 31 woman was like Mary.  I picture her as a woman who had an incredible peace about her as she went along in her daily activities--a peace that only comes from spending time in prayer, devotion, and worship to her God.  Yes, Martha opened her home and heart to Jesus, but Mary let him fill her heart as well.

There is much to learn from Martha concerning having a servant's heart.  But when does having a servant's heart turn into being a slave to getting things done and trying to solve problems by doing more?  Maybe I should be a little more like Martha's sister, Mary. Sit at the feet of Christ.  Talk with God.  Just be still and listen.  Open that Bible on my nightstand that has been neglected lately because of all the time spent trying to be super wife and mom.  What's more important?  Nurturing my faith in Christ and spending time with my family or folding the clean laundry piled up on the guest bed, dealing with the stack of dishes in the sink, and plucking dog hair off my couch?  That should be a no brainer.

Why Set Goals for Myself?

I am hopeful, excited, and to be quite honest with you, nervous, to begin traveling down this path towards becoming more like the noble woman in Proverbs 31.  For a long time, this nervousness has been holding me back.  In the beginning I didn't recognize what it was that was keeping me in fear. Finally I realized that it was nervousness (of failing, of not being able to do it on my own, of looking foolish, of disappointing others, myself, and God, the list really can go on forever...).  Yet at first, and extending into a very long time after that, I fully didn't understand why I was even nervous in the first place.  Recently, however, God has been giving me insights into my past and into my soul, and I'm now more aware of why this paralyzing nervousness exists.

Deciding how and in what areas of my life I needed to grow used to come easily to me.  In high school, both in academics and in athletics, I excelled in setting goals, following through with them, evaluating and re-evaluating myself, and setting new goals again.  I pushed myself, and I always aimed to better myself.  I never tried to be the best.  I just tried to do and to be my best.  My very wise and beautiful mother instilled that into me at a very young age, and she always stressed that she would be proud of me no matter what.  So, growing up in my small southeast Texas town, my motto was:  Be the best student that I can be.  Be the best volleyball and softball player that I can be.  Be the best friend that I can be.  Be the best leader that I can be, and so on, and so on.  This was what I did.  It was who I was, and I'm ashamed to say that I had a hard time identifying with people who struggled with motivation.  (Yuck, how arrogant!)  Looking back I now understand why it was so easy for me to stay motivated.  How could one surrounded by such an amazing and altruistic support system not be motivated?  This was one of those "ah ha" moments in my life.  My motivation did not come from myself at all.  Rather, it came from very specific people who God purposefully placed in my life as a teenager:  amazing teachers who believed I was capable of doing great things one day (God bless Mrs. Roberts, Mrs. McBride, and Mr. Perryman), tough, no-nonsense coaches who pushed me to my limits, loving parents who always encouraged me, loyal friends who supported me, and a selfless pastor who invested his precious and valuable time to teach and nurture me in the faith.

Unfortunately, during my college years, in which I was away from my support system and comfort zone, I seemed to lose sight of how to set and achieve goals effectively.  Don't get me wrong; I didn't go crazy or anything like that.  In fact, it was quite the opposite.  It was in college that my heart burned even more for Christ.  I became extremely active at The Wesley Foundation Methodist Student Center at Texas A&M University.  I couldn't get enough of the worships, the deep bible studies, the small groups, the accountability, the crazy fun, the memorable trips, and the awesome friends.  I practically lived there.  I met my husband and some of my best friends there.  My parents even joked, and still do for that matter, that I majored in Wesley instead of in psychology.  Sure, my spiritual life was blooming.  I longed for authentic worship, I felt a part of a faith community, and I devoured the scriptures.  For the most part, I tried to let my spiritual growth affect my thoughts, my behavior, my attitude, and the words that came out of my mouth.  But I made a critical mistake:  I was not open to letting the spiritual growth permeate into other areas of my life, such as my seemingly ordinary and boring academic life.  Let me be clear.  When the Holy Spirit approached the flat, non-scenic, academic road of my life, I presented it with a hideous, bulky roadblock accompanied by a big, ugly, orange sign that read, "Detour".  During that time, instead of letting go so that my spiritual life could affect other areas of my life in positive and godly ways, it's as if I used my spiritual growth to replace the need to set and follow through with goals in other areas of my life.  I became unbalanced.  The result?  A very average, ho-hum college education.  I could have gotten so much more out of that experience.  I could have learned so much more.  To me my spiritual life and my academic life were two very separate things entirely.  Not only that, but I even thought, "Why should they have anything to do with the other?"  Behold, the idiot.

When you grow spiritually, it should not only be evident in your worship and in how you practice what Richard Foster in his book Celebration of Discipline calls your spiritual disciplines (prayer, meditation, studying scripture, fasting, etc.) , but it should be evident in every aspect of your life--no matter how mundane, worldly, and seemingly unimportant you think it might be.  I just didn't get that.  When graduate school finally rolled around, and also with my teaching career, it seemed easy to set and achieve goals again.  In graduate school, I knew that my future depended on it.  With so many cooperative study groups and projects, I also knew that other students were depending on me and the work that I put into it.  With teaching, I knew that I was standing on holy ground.  Being a part of children's lives in a positive way, impacting their hopes and dreams, loving them enough to set boundaries for them and discipline them, and spurring them on to do great things and to believe in themselves--that was sacred.  And I knew it.  I knew the stakes were high, and I knew what it would take of me to be the best graduate student and elementary school teacher that I could possibly be.  So I put in the time to make sure that I excelled.  I finally got it.  My professional goals and how I achieved them were closely intertwined with my journey of faith.  God was calling me to be in seminary, and God was calling me into the first grade classroom.  Therefore, the goals, how ever practical they may have been, held deep, significant, and spiritual meaning.

Now, I've come to a new chapter in my life--a chapter that began when my son was eleven months old.  I am now a stay-at-home mom.  More than anything in my life, I felt this calling the deepest.  Since becoming a stay-at-home mom, I have realized that I have been growing more spiritually again, which excites me.   When I first began to stay at home full time, I knew that calling involved spending more quality time with my son and husband, making them more of a priority, focusing on our family time together, nurturing my son spiritually, playing with him, having silly fun together, and teaching him social skills, his letters and numbers, and all sorts of other things --all the easy and fun things about being a stay-at-home mom.  That part of the calling was a no brainer.  Here's the sad part.  I never realized until recently that if being a stay-at-home mom is truly a calling from God for me, then I should embrace ALL aspects of being a stay-at-home mom as a calling--even the mundane, worldly, seemingly unimportant tasks that go along with being a stay-at-home mom that are not that fun at all.  Even those things are part of this calling.  Who am I to pick and choose what part of my calling to follow?  When I first realized this,  my prayers and struggles with God looked a little something like this, "Grocery shopping and cooking?  Really?  That has something to do with spiritual things?  All sitting down at the table to eat together as a family?  And, God, did you say eat without the t.v. on?  Maybe I'm hearing you wrong.  Surely, you don't care how hard I work to get my child to eat vegetables willingly?  Seriously, God?  This is intertwined into my relationship with you?  Getting our family on a budget, spending money wisely, and getting out of debt?  That is a part of my spiritual walk with you, Lord?  And come on.  Laundry?  Give me a break.  You've got to be kidding."  Once I finished throwing my temper tantrum, I accepted that the reality of the situation is that being a stay-at-home mom is my full-time job, my calling, and it's time to embrace all of it--not just the parts that I pick and choose.  My behavior would be like the Israelites choosing to skip the forty years of wandering in the desert.  No thank you, God.  Just please fast forward me straight to the promised land, the good stuff.  Thanks.  Now, saying that I need to view the every day, ordinary tasks of running a home as part of this calling is not to say that my husband doesn't cook, clean, spend time with our son, change diapers, do laundry, etc.  In our marriage we are equal partners.  But, lately, I have not been carrying my load when it comes to these ordinary tasks.  And when I do, I am not doing it out of a joyful heart and with a heart of a servant carrying out her divine calling.

So, what are my goals for 2011?  How do I plan on beginning on the path towards becoming like the godly wife and mother that Proverbs 31 speaks so highly of?

• Plan meals for one entire week at a time and grocery shop once a week for these meals.
• Cook at least 4-5 meals at home for my family per week.
• Get my son to try everything that I cook for a meal at least once, and get him to fully eat at least one thing that I cook each meal (It can be a main dish or a side, and it is acceptable to supplement with other food he likes.)
• Get my son to eat a variety and all of his vegetables at meal times.
• Have my son, my husband, and I all eating dinner at the same time, sitting down all together as a family at the table with the t.v off and no cell phones.  (Music is okay.)
• Sit down at the table with my son when he is eating breakfast and lunch, even if I am not eating.  I won't simply be in the kitchen doing other stuff while he is eating.
• Load and run the dishwasher at night before bed.
• Designate one day a week to doing multiple loads of laundry.
•  Try the local early childhood PTA. (This will be an outlet for me to socialize and learn from other stay-at-home moms and guest speakers as well as an opportunity for my son to have structured play time and activities with other children.)
• Be more committed to attending the weekly women's bible study at my church on Wednesdays.  (Make it to at least 24 sessions this year.  The bible study does not meet during the summer.)
• Try the MOM'S group at church that meets bi-monthly. (This will be another great outlet for me to fellowship with other moms, but in a Christian setting where we can learn from one another, encourage one another, grow spiritually with one another, and keep one another accountable.)
• Take part in at least one other various bible study at my church throughout the year (Crossing Point mini bible studies every three months, lent bible studies, advent bible studies, etc.)
• Teach my son his letter sounds and numbers in a more organized way.
• Join the weekly Christ-focused preschool group that my friends started.
• Nurture my son spiritually and creatively (through having him attend Sunday School and church, through taking part in the weekly Christ-focused preschool group together, and through nightly prayer time).
• Schedule at least one play date a week outside other weekly activities in which being with other children is a given.
• Set a reasonable family budget, stick to it, and use Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace concepts to learn how to spend money wisely so that we can begin to get our family out of some debt.

The Proverbs 31 Project runs much deeper than surface goals for me.  This, above all, will be a spiritual journey.  Yes, I have goals that are very practical concerning my development in my role as a mother and a wife.  Yes, I have goals concerning my household and my family's well-being as a whole.  And yes, I have goals concerning the educational, social, and physical development of my two year old son.  But all of these goals and the accomplishment of these goals spawn from a deeper yearning:  to personally grow spiritually as I carry out my calling to be a stay-at-home mom and to help my son, in turn, grow spiritually.  These are not things that I can "accomplish" or that I can do on my own.  God is the One who is the ultimate transformer.  It will not be me doing the work, but God doing the work through me.   So here I am, Lord, waiting to be transformed.