Time to Stir the Pot

A few days ago The Mr. sent me this blog post.  It's called A Mommy Life, Unmodified.

We've had some seriously interesting conversations after this.  I thought you'd enjoy a few of the thought high lights.

There is a strange competitive thing that happens in "mommy land".  There is a strange sort of idea that everything must revolve or center around the child. As mom's we sort of invisibly compete with each other and lay on the guilt, sometimes on each other, often times on ourselves.

As mom's there is this drive and expectation that to be a good parent all of life must center around the child and giving them whatever is "the best".  This seems to happen at the cost of the very identity of the mom.

The mid-life mommy meltdowns seem to start happening when we start realizing that we feel lost and trapped and slighted and angry and all kinds of other things and we don't know why.  In a weird way we sold our souls to become mommy's, the best mommy's and what we really did was lose our minds a little at a time.

Sometimes we hit the crazy years and we pull a plan to work it like a marathon.  We tell ourselves the years of kids are short and we will miss it later.  We say it's ok to be completely focused on the kids and put ourselves last.  We listen to the lectures about giving ourselves some "me" time or do something for ourselves and we comply, but only in the tiny ways that seem acceptable.  We get a pedi and declare ourselves satisfied.

I'm not saying that this applies to everyone, but I'm also not saying that I completely buy into this mommy life thing.

I fear my ideas and thoughts on this are all too fuzzy for you to understand, but I'll keep at it for a while.

Now, take this idea a little further.  Go read it again and replace the Mommy phenomenon with being "a good Christian".

Instead of mommy porn, mom jeans, mommy vans and mommy hair cuts, we have Christian rock, books and movies.  We spend a lot of energy on "as a Christian" I can't have this or do that or watch this or listen to that.  I can't go to that event or hang with those people or dress that way.

We approach living Christian lives in a really weird twisted way.  It's a sort of marathon of endurance of who can stay most focused and denied and repressed the longest wins.  Pick the strictest standards and rules you think you can live in and see how long you can do it "perfectly".

Switch back to the mommy thing for a second.

We have forgotten how to "just let our kids be kids".  There are articles written about it all the time, lamenting it's loss and arguing about how to do it.

It's the same with being Christian.  There are all kinds of books coming out all the time about how to live more Christian.

I suspect on both fronts, we're making it much harder and more complicated than it really is.  We would rather have all the hype and challenge and "failure" than just giving up our illusion of control and getting on with the living.

Let's open a discussion, what do you think??