You Can't Judge a Mom By Her Purse
Posted by Danielle Bean in Family on Monday, October 25, 2010 10:00 AM
I usually don’t respond. I usually take the advice that I offer sensitive fellow bloggers all the time, and choose instead to be “above it all.”
But this time I feel compelled to respond to a combox conversation. Because I think the interaction in this particular circumstance demonstrates something much larger and more important than my own precious feelings or the nastiness of petty comments.
Because this kind of thing happens all the time.
Any time a writer, particularly a mother, shares a light-hearted perspective on parenting that includes details of any kind, she is sure to trigger somebody’s inner superiority complex. In this case, the damning detail I shared was the fact that I usually bring a sippy cup of juice to Mass for my 4-year-old son.
I will pause here so everyone who feels the need can collectively gasp/judge/sigh/roll their eyes ...
Finished? Good. Because the negative comments I got, along with their excited punctuation, racist remarks, and good old fashioned maternal snobbery, completely missed the point. The point of my column was to not take ourselves so seriously. I was crazy enough to hope we could relax a little bit and laugh at ourselves and the ridiculous things this crazy job called parenting sometimes makes our otherwise sane selves do.
I am addressing this today because the “something bigger” I see here isn’t only my own pride or sense of righteousness (though I will admit to struggling with a bit of both). The “something bigger” I see here, and have seen many times and in many places on the internet and in real life, is a human temptation to make ourselves feel just a little bit taller, smarter, holier, and wiser ... by stepping on other people.
You can’t judge a mom by her purse.
Because sometimes? Sometimes a mom has eight beautiful children for whom she is exceedingly grateful. In fact, this grateful mom would love to have even just one more child, but that does not seem to be part of God’s plan for her family right now. She can accept this, but like many loving mothers, she does wince just a bit at the thought of never having another “baby” in the house. It’s a sore spot in her heart.
And so she might tend to “baby” her growing 4-year-old a little longer than she did his older siblings. And that might very well mean packing a sippy cup of juice in her purse before Mass.
And that is okay. I am confident that is okay.
I know it is okay because among the many blessings of being a the mother of eight growing children is the fact that I have gained a little perspective. Whereas I might have once been the Mother Superior, clucking her tongue at a sippy cup in the pew, I have grown to learn something more important than smugness.
I have learned that all those things we fret and fuss about early on—why isn’t he potty trained yet, will she ever give up the pacifier, and isn’t he too old for sippy cups at Mass?—really do have a way of working themselves out in the end.
Even more importantly, I have learned—and am still learning—the kind of mother I want to be. I know the days when I fall short. It is on those humbling days that I realize I have no maternal laurels on which to rest. It is on those days that I realize I have no energy to spare for worrying about the faults and failings of others. I focus my efforts on my own weakness and sin and I lean hard on God’s grace.
Because I am nothing without Christ.
As disappointing as some online interactions can be, though, I believe in the goodness of women. I believe in the power of women to support and encourage one another, even in online communities. Some people have even called me a “Pollyanna” because I so firmly believe that when we decide to be, we can be an amazing source of encouragement and support to one another. The kind that God intends us to be.
But I think that is absolutely part of what we do here at Faith & Family. You don’t have to look very far to see that. And I want to thank every one of you for that today.
Print Blog
Email a FriendPost a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Faith And Family Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
