Mothering is not the sum total of who you are, and it isn’t the subtraction from all you are. Host of the allmomdoes podcast Julie Lyles Carr helps you discover the bigger picture of you.
Listen to “#175 – Motherhood Is….With Julie Lyles Carr” on Spreaker.
Interview Links:
- The Modern Motherhood Podcast #60: Rachel Marie Martin – Finding Joy in Motherhood
- “How Mom Skills are Great Leadership Skills“
Transcription:
[00:00:12] Julie Lyles Carr: I’m Julie Lyles Carr and you’re listening to the allmomdoes podcast a quick programming note before we jump into today’s episode. We are going to be moving the day that the episodes drop to Wednesday. That’s why you’re finding this episode for the first time on a Wednesday today, instead of the day that we used to
[00:00:29] drop our episodes. It just has to do with production calendars and the way that our team works, all those things. So just know if you’re looking for us, Wednesdays will now be the day that new episodes come out. You haven’t missed anything. There’s nothing afoot. We’re just moving the episode drop days to Wednesday.
[00:00:45] So thanks so much for being here. As I sit here recording this today, it’s kind of interesting. Today is literally the day three years ago that my mother-in-law went home to be with the Lord. And almost six months ago, my mom passed away as well. And my grandmother just three weeks before my mom. So this will be a season for me in which I’m coming up to events like Mother’s Day and some other family events that are happening in which I’m now
[00:01:15] the matriarch technically. I mean, I’m the one I am now the oldest female member of our extended family. And that is such a bizarre feeling. I still feel pretty unequipped and too young to be that person right now, but that is who I am. And it’s gotten me to thinking a lot about just what it means to be
[00:01:39] a mom. Now that may sound really strange since I have a lot of kids and I’ve been in the mothering lane for quite a while now, but there’s something about knowing that I’m now the one that these younger ones are looking to, and I’m the mom, you know, there’s something about when your mom or your mother-in-law or your grandmother around that
[00:02:00] you still look that way to them as them being the example. And when they have finished their story here and they’ve moved on and you’re left with their legacy, but they’re not daily in that place that they can share that wisdom of motherhood with you. And now you’re the one people are looking to. Man, it makes you pretty reflective.
[00:02:22] Well, it was, I was thinking about this. I remembered that back on episode 60 of this podcast, we had a guest on named Rachel Marie Martin. And I can have Rebecca link that episode for you in the show notes, if you want to go back and listen. But as a result of us meeting through doing the podcast, she asked me if I would be willing to write something. She was gathering together several bloggers and podcasters, and she asked if I would be willing to write something that we could do as a compilation
[00:02:47] with these other guest writers as well about mothering and the prompt for this was two simple words. Motherhood is…, and we were to just take those that thought and unpack it write about what it meant to us. And it was put together on a blog post. Well, I thought this was probably the right time for me to go back and take a look
[00:03:11] those years ago before some of these events happened that I was describing to take a look at what I thought motherhood was at that point in my life. What still resonates is true. What I might adapt at this point, maybe what I’ve learned since then. And so I want to share that reading with you. Motherhood is an unveiling, a sudden nakedness, a slow revealing. It is discovering and understanding of yourself that has previously been unknown.
[00:03:39] Before I became a mother, I knew I had the capacity for deep connection and emotion, but from that first shockingly positive pregnancy test, until that last push, I didn’t know the level of ferocity I could have for another human being. The level of vulnerability and fear I could feel for another human being, the mystery of carrying the echo of my ancestors and the future song of my descendants inside myself, contained in a baby carried in my womb in the present.
[00:04:11] I didn’t know how wildly patient and how furiously impatient I could be at the same time. I didn’t know I could be so fully consumed in myself and the changes in my body, in every nudge and craving and yet, so fully self less. Consumed fully in the life I carried inside me. I didn’t know I could endure that kind of pain when the gap between the inner world and the outer one becomes the curtain of one’s own flesh and that primal ambition to shred one’s own body to release another’s.
[00:04:44] I didn’t know that I could be stitched back together and then sit upon those stitches so as to offer my breast to my newborn, I didn’t know, I could laugh this hard at a child’s Christmas Eve antics. I didn’t know, I could have my heart broken in an audiology booth the toddler on my lap, not responding to the sound she was supposed to.
[00:05:03] I didn’t know. I could hold a screaming child down while we had his lip stitched back together. I didn’t know I could share this loud over a dance competition. I didn’t know a spelling word list could bring me to furious tears. I didn’t know that the words pediatric stroke would try to defeat me. I didn’t know that I could entirely sacrifice and that it could be simultaneously selfless and completely selfish wanting everything good for my child.
[00:05:33] Now I do. This is motherhood. The signs were all there. It wasn’t that becoming a mother completely changed me. It was that all those elements of my deepest self had not found expression in this way before. I knew what it was to be daughter, daughter-in-law, sister, sister-in-law, friend, enemy, wife, lover, follower leader.
[00:05:55] But I didn’t know this, this mothering role, this view of myself in a mirror of womanhood that one can be told about, but cannot know until she has stepped into the terrain and allow the path to spread beneath her feet. That woman, she was new to me in a familiar way. I could see my grandmother, my mother, my mother-in-law in her, but she was a fully new and ancient creature.
[00:06:22] This exposure of the mother in me. To know these children I have been entrusted with has become a central heartbeat. To love and launch them well has been the cadence of my years through the freshness of my twenties, through the fatigue of my thirties, through the pragmatism of my forties. And now having just crossed my fifth decade of life with young children still at home,
[00:06:43] the wonder that I’ve had the honor to have had this life’s work. So yes, to know these children, this is motherhood, but it is also the mystery and the mission that I have come to know, me. To know more of the why behind what drove me as a child, as a teenager, as a young woman. To know why those competing forces of fear and courage, beat strong, even then. To know why those enemies of drive and contentment lived in an easy piece, even then. To know why more fully I chose the man, I did the man who would be their father to see more completely that the making of me was the making of them.
[00:07:23] And the making of them was the making of me. This is motherhood. Motherhood is me. You know, as I reflect back on those words and having written that, I think I’m realizing even more fully now what I meant and what I saw. You know, I think we have in our culture, this sense that to do mothering well in some way means that it’s gotta be everything you are or.
[00:07:56] It somehow defines you in a way that eliminates all the other definitions. Well, it is profound. It does play a huge role in you discovering who you are, but here’s a statement that I’ve written that I really want you to consider and listen to well, because here’s what I think even after all these years, I’m truly discovering.
[00:08:19] Mothering is not the sum total of who you are and it isn’t the subtraction from all you are. I want to say that again, mothering is not the sum total of who you are and it isn’t the subtraction from all you are. So what do I mean by that? Well, I had a season of life where I thought that being a mom defined me practically in every way.
[00:08:50] And in some ways I embraced that a little bit. You know, when you’re the mom who’s known for throwing the big birthday parties or you’re the mom who the kids love to come over because you let them have water balloon fights. And you’re the mom who doesn’t stress over her floors, getting dirty and you let everybody do watercolor, whatever your type mom is,
[00:09:10] she’s the mom who, fill in the blank, somehow that can become so much of our identity. For some of us it becomes our entire identity. And when we hit those times in which our kids are going to launch, we are at a loss. Of course there is the missing them that’s going to happen no matter how we identify ourselves, but for some of us, when it has become so much our fullest identity, it can make those years really hard.
[00:09:42] And so to keep in mind, it’s not the sum total of who you are. There’s another place too, that there is a carving off of some of the things that maybe we have needed trimmed away. I mean, let’s face it, there is nothing like knowing that you have to exist without some sleep because that baby’s got an ear infection and your the one that baby wants. There are so many things about mothering that force us to put aside what our primary need might be in the moment.
[00:10:13] Our preference. All of those things. And a lot of that actually though inconvenient, sleepless, and sometimes making you not feel so great, is there that kind of honing, that kind of pruning can be so powerful. But here’s, what’s interesting. It doesn’t mean it’s subtracting from all you are. It actually is revealing who you are and who you can be.
[00:10:43] So if you’re in a season of discouragement, if you’re in a season where mothering feels really overwhelming right now, I’m not here today to offer really some great tips on how to get back to a place where you feel more organized or more rested or those kinds of things. I mean, those, those resources can exist
[00:11:00] some of them are really helpful in some of them really kind of sound like a daydream, but what I am here to say as the deep core of who you are as a mom, it’s a component of who you are. And so for those days that are great revel in it and congratulate yourself on a day well lived. And on those days that aren’t great, know that it is a component of who you are and that none of it is there to make you less of who you are.
[00:11:31] The challenge is in the joys, help reveal all you are. I thought this was really interesting for those of us who are in those years of mothering littles and it feels like that’s all there is. And maybe you’re struggling with the balance between work and home because you feel like if you’re doing a great job at work, then maybe you’re missing it at home.
[00:11:52] Or if you’re doing a great job at home, then maybe you’re missing the promotions and the performance that, you know, maybe is going to get some of your associates and peers moving up the ladder faster than you. Or maybe you’ve decided to be home in this season with your kids and it leaves you wondering, what am I going to do next?
[00:12:09] How am I going to reenter the job market? Do I even want that? But what do I do once I get my kids launched or get them started into school? What’s that going to look like? Well, I thought this was really interesting in this idea that motherhood is a revealing of who we are. There’s a study that came out recently in the Seattle times, actually wrote up an article on it that you can go check out.
[00:12:31] They interviewed Mary Lou Berg, Alfonzo, who is the chief operating officer of Bright Horizons. And in their interview with her, she talked about this study that reveals that 89% of American workers believe that working moms in leadership roles bring out the best in their employees. 89% said, yeah, women who have mothered, boy, those are the ones you want in leadership roles because they know how to bring out the best in people.
[00:13:02] In this interview with Mary Lou Berg Alfonzo, she identified three things that she talked about that she believes. This is why this is true. It’s because as a mom, first of all, you become a leader in your own life. Even if you would say pre kids, oh, I don’t know that I’m someone who’s really a leader. If you’re now a mom, you’re a leader.
[00:13:22] You are leading extensively, a wide range of personalities. You are leading through all kinds of challenges. You are leading when things aren’t convenient. You are leading with examples of flexibility and compassion. It’s pretty fascinating. When you think about the skill set that gets revealed in you.
[00:13:42] When you live as a mom. When that wife experience becomes part of the revealing of you. The second thing she identified is that, you know, the value of listening. Let’s face it as a mom, when you are in that car taking that kid to soccer practice, and that kid is talking your ear off about the latest video game that he or she is way into.
[00:14:04] You’re doing all the aha really? Aha. Aha. And you might not be completely taking in all the details of what that video game is, but here’s what you are doing. You are practicing and you are revealing that you understand the value of listening to people. Because when we listen to people, they feel known, they feel seen, they feel they are important.
[00:14:26] And as a mom, you’re doing this all the time and what’s being revealed in you, is this beautiful skill of being able to do that well, exercising that muscle well. Even if you’re someone where you say, man, I’ve always been the chatty Cathy in the group, but motherhood will reveal in you the ability and the desire to listen to your kids.
[00:14:46] And that means you’re also learning that skill for the rest of your world and the people in your world as well. And then the third thing that she identified that seems to really stand out when it comes to women who are moms and their ability to be leaders within organizations is that you know, the value of relationship.
[00:15:06] You know, moms have to learn early on that sometimes far beyond how the cupcakes turned far beyond how well the bed is made or isn’t, it’s the relationship with the child that really has to stay paramount. And so when we are in those mothering years and we’re having to always make those adjustments of expectation to keep relationship primary with our kids, even when they don’t live up to our expectations, even when they do things that we’re not too crazy about or were really surprised by, we understand at a primal level as moms, that the relationship with that child has to stand paramount.
[00:15:44] And so in the practice of all of that, these beautiful things can be revealed in you. In those days that are challenging. In those days where you’re having to listen to something for the umpteenth time. In those days where the frustration comes. Remember those things aren’t subtracting from all you are, and not in any way they are adding
[00:16:08] to all that you are. It was also revealed in this study that workers consider those who are moms in their workforce, better listeners. They consider them calmer and crises, more diplomatic, better team players. It’s really amazing what goes on and on. When you look at what happens in an organization, when a woman who has been mothering comes into that place in leadership.
[00:16:33] And I tell you that for this reason, We can have those seasons in which we feel invisible in our mothering. We can have those seasons in which we can be simultaneously so grateful to have these kids in our lives and also wondering, wow, am I doing anything? Am I making a difference. Is anything gonna come of this, this raising of these kids?
[00:16:58] How does this speak forward and into the future? And yet you can know, even in places where people aren’t necessarily looking for it, the things that you’re learning, the things that you are growing in, they show up and are noticed on the other side. Even outside of a world of raising kids and soccer practice and looking for shinguards. It does show up and people recognize it and value it.
[00:17:22] It made me think of the verse in Proverbs 31 and verse 31. And I know we read these things all the time and we can kind of get it and wrote, and we forget to stop sometime and really pause on these words. It says in Proverbs 31 and 31, honor her for all that her hands have done and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.
[00:17:41] To me, this kind of study and the further studies that you can easily find when you look at the value that moms bring to organizations, that’s the praise I’m talking about that shows up when you have been in the trenches, mothering, there is absolutely all that work, everything that’s done, it does bring you praise in places that you may have never considered.
[00:18:04] It does help reveal all that you were designed to be. Of course, when we talk about moms where those of us in the faith community, we often have to talk about the mother of Jesus, Mary, because she’s the one that we look to and go, wow, talk about an example of a mom. And there are a few things that I think are really fascinating as I look at her life because in some ways, when we use that air quotes thing of, Oh, I’m just a mom, and we don’t value what’s happening there when we allow it to become the sum total of our identity,
[00:18:34] but we don’t understand that it’s all part of the bigger picture of who God designed us to be. We miss some of the things I think that we need to be sure to take a look at when it comes to Mary’s life and the contribution that she made to ministry. It says in Luke 2 in verse 51, that as Mary was looking at all of these amazing things, the things that were being spoken over this child, Jesus, who had been brought into her life. The visitors who came, the things that were spoken, the gifts that were given and the events that all surrounding this, it says that his mother, Jesus, his mother, Mary treasured up all these things in her heart.
[00:19:12] Yes. As a family archivist, I think she was taking all of that in, in the way that she was really the person who was going to be the the memory center for everything that happened in Christ childhood, and looking forward to what those things might mean for his life. But she also became this incredible storehouse of experience.
[00:19:34] She wasn’t just a mom. She was a leader. She was someone who was going to help propel the mission of Jesus forward. And how do I know this? Well, for example, what we call the first recorded miracle of Jesus and his ministry, when Jesus turns water to wine at the wedding, that was because Mary was the one who really kind of prompted all that and gave him that nudge.
[00:20:00] We need more wine son. Hey, you attendance. You do exactly what he tells you to do. It’s a really interesting exchange between Jesus and his mom and his mom to those attendants who could bring out the raw materials that Jesus was going to need to do this miracle. And we see him from this point forward launch more fully the ministry.
[00:20:18] Why? Because, because Mary, yes was his mama, but she was also someone who’d really been paying attention. She was someone who had really treasured and thought about and pondered what his course might be and what her role in it was to be. She had continued to develop as a person. And we see this arc with her, where she goes from this girl who was devoted and faithful, the girl who receives this incredible news, that she’s going to become the mother of a baby
[00:20:50] who’s going to become the Messiah. And all of the things that she went through in that period of her life. We now see her as this extremely self-assured, here’s what needs to happen, let’s go, let’s get busy. Look at the development and growth this woman has experienced. Yes, as Jesus’s mom, but also as Mary, the one who had been selected by God for this role. It’s really amazing to me to take a look at her courage, at her confidence,
[00:21:25] at the way in which she launches out in the story in the book of John about Jesus’s first miracle. And then when I look ahead into the book of Acts, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, there’s a verse that talks about everyone had gathered this early church experience had gathered. They’re really trying to determine what they’re supposed to do next
[00:21:45] once Jesus has ascended back into heaven, and guess who was there? Mary, the mother of Jesus. She continued to find her life’s work even after if you will, her son had launched, launched into his ministry, launched into his purpose, and ultimately launched back to sit at the right hand of God. There was more to Mary than being the mother of Jesus.
[00:22:14] And if there is more to that woman who birthed the savior into the world, isn’t there more to us. And this is not to minimize in any way, the role we play as moms. It is so critical. It is so important. You know that I know that. But I just want us to get our heads around, particularly on those days that maybe we feel that we’re lacking a little bit of purpose or clarity. When the days get long, when the messes pile up,
[00:22:42] I want us to remember that there is a revealing that is happening in you. Not a reduction. There is a growth that is happening in you. Not an atrophied. I love being a mom, but there have been times that I was also frantic that it was quote unquote, all I was going to be. And as crazy as I am about my kids, as much as I wanted to pour myself out for them and be there for them,
[00:23:11] and I’ve spent the bulk of my days doing exactly that there would be times I’d head back to my house after an hour to myself or going to a Bible study or a book club. And I would feel almost breathless at the notion of going back into the house. Just knowing all that crush of little people and their needs and what they wanted and having to put some of my needs to the side to make that happen that could sometimes leave me feeling pretty compressed.
[00:23:37] I tried to always keep in mind that ultimately my job was to launch these kids, which meant I would be working myself out of a job, and out of the identity of being known most commonly as Madison’s mom, or McKenna’s mom, or Justice’s mom, or Mason’s mom, or Jared’s mom, or Journey’s mom, or Mercy’s mom, or Jacob’s mom, and then who would I be?
[00:23:56] But I’m reminding myself and I want to remind you, there is something bigger going on right now in the work you are doing. It is growing you. It is growing a legacy. Right now, you may be seeing endless laundry baskets and the daily wearing of spit-up is your signature fragrance. Maybe it looks like lots of sitting in parking, lots, waiting for soccer practice to finish.
[00:24:17] Maybe you feel like you’ve got mom brain all the time, but you know what? As you work through those years, as you store up in treasure, all these things in your heart, you are doing something active, for who you are. You are doing something that is powerful for you to understand more deeply, who you were created to be. Whatever stage you are in the university of motherhood,
[00:24:46] you’re right where you’re supposed to be. And all the lessons, the challenges, the good days, and the bad are growing you into the fullest version of yourself. Even if you’ve been wearing the same sweat pants for the last three days, you are still growing into the fullest version of yourself. I have to tell you, and to some degree, shame on me, but as I look now at the lives of my mother, and my grandmother, and my mother-in-law, I realized that there were times when they were still with me, that
[00:25:20] I was so identified to them and their role as mom, I sometimes missed the larger story of them as women. But I’m paying attention now. And there is such a beauty that comes in looking back in the photo albums, in looking back through the records in some of their writings and journal entries, in some of the love letters that my father-in-law sent to my mother-in-law and remembering a fresh that their stories were far bigger
[00:25:49] then just their mothering. And their mothering was far bigger than just a story. In all of it. I can see a little more clearly now that motherhood truly is the revealing of everything that you are, everything I am and that it’s not all things. That God has a story for you that absolutely motherhood is part of that story, but you are first and foremost
[00:26:18] his child. You are first and foremost, someone for whom he is building a story day by day. And you are someone who I know can take the treasure of mothering and turn it into profits and dividends forward that are going to impact not only this generation, but the next. Remember mothering is not the sum total of who you are, and it isn’t the subtraction from all you are.
[00:26:50] Thanks so much for being with me today. Hey, if you love listening to the podcast, do me a solid. It is so great when you go over and give us a five star wherever you’re listening to your podcasts, it helps bump it up so other listeners can find it as well. I want to send out a big thanks to Donna, our producer and Rebecca, our content coordinator.
[00:27:08] Be sure and check out the show notes that Rebecca puts together each and every week. And I can’t wait to see you next time on the allmomdoes podcast.
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allmomdoes Podcast with Julie Lyles Carr is designed to equip and encourage you for the kids you’re raising, the marriages you’re nurturing, the work you’re building, all in the day and age in which you live. We aim to cover ALL mom does. allmomdoes Podcast was previously known as The Modern Motherhood Podcast.
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