Running Her Race: Transitions in Motherhood
By: Jasmine Wilson
There I was slogging through the rain trying to catch a glimpse of my daughter at her cross-country meet and I was choking back tears. Simple tearing-up would have been fine and easy to hide but I was actually fighting back a full blown sob-fest.
I had made it to the race just minutes earlier right before the start. I found a spot just past the starting line in the hopes that she would see me. She gave me a little wave, and I felt relieved. I had wanted her to know I was there supporting her because she was at a point at the end of her season where she was just worn out. Running is painful and takes mental energy that she felt was depleted so she was dreading the race. I knew I could not run the race for her, but I could be her cheerleader.
The mass of students took off with the starting buzzer, and I watched as my daughter started her race and ran past me. If I was to continue being her cheerleader, I needed to take a shortcut through the field and find a spot on the edge of the race track where she would pass by next.
As I rushed across the field, scrambling to get to a spot, I wondered if I would see her again. I was not familiar with the track, wasn't sure where I was going or if I would make it to a spot where I could clap for her and yell her name as she passed by. I was in a bit of a panic facing the possibility that maybe I wouldn't, and I would fail at being her cheerleader. As the weight of this thought became heavier, I recognized these familiar feelings of anxiousness and desperation that were rising within me. They were the feelings that had lately become my self-imposed shackles of motherhood.
The truth is, I have been a hot mess for a while. The anxiousness and fight for control in my mothering is easy to hide, but the inward battle is real and consuming. My kids aren’t physically exhausting two-year olds anymore. Those days were full and exhausting because of the physical energy it took to care for them and constantly instruct and redirect their irrational toddler behavior.
Now they feed themselves, dress themselves, and do most things themselves. They also spend a lot of time away from me - either at school, or at various extracurricular activities and social engagements. All this now means I have no immediate say in the choices they make when I am not next to them, as I did when they were younger, instructing their every move. This terrifies me. It’s saddening to hear my kids say something I have never let them say, but it's clear they say it when I am not around. It's shocking when I hear their thoughts on an issue that is more informed by the culture than the time they have spent by my side. It’s unsettling to learn that they have done something that I would never want them to do. So, these days are full and exhausting too, but because of the fear that often overtakes me.
Fear concerning my children and desperately struggling for control in my mothering was the shackled-state that I found myself in as the cross- country meet began. So, when the race had started and I felt unsure if I could do what I needed to do as a cheering cross-country mother, that insecure feeling was all too familiar.
Those feelings are not what made me cry though. And I was not crying because I didn't get to a cheer-spot in time. I was crying because the Holy Spirit used the circumstances of the meet to show me the changing role of my motherhood and the necessity of trusting His work. Not that I was unaware of the presence of the Holy Spirit in my mothering before, but my children’s growing independence forced me to reckon with the fact that I can’t run with them, they must run without me. Cross-country, with me struggling to follow my daughter around in a race that was very much hers, and not mine at all, provided a metaphor of what I had been doing in mothering. And showed me how I needed to turn my eyes toward the Holy Spirit and his work in their lives:
They run without me at times, but the Holy Spirit is always with them.
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be
with you forever…” John 14:16
He reminds them of the truth they have known, and declares truth where they are blind- even when I am not there to do it.
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” John 14:26
“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” John 16:13
When I can’t be at the cheer spots, the Holy spirit gives hope to their hearts through the truth of God’s word..
“...that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope…” Romans 15:4
“Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you.I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” Isaiah 46:4
And he provides strength for them when they are too weak to run on their own, and I cannot carry them.
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.” Romans 8:26
“...strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being…” Ephesians 3:16
These were truths I have known about the Holy Spirit, but I was suddenly able to apply to mothering in a very concrete way and tears began to form as it seemed I was being introduced to the Holy Spirit anew. With the tremendous relief from feeling and seeing the joy of those truths, came the nearly uncontrollable cross-country crying. What jubilation it brought to my heart to know that the same Holy Spirit that directed my thoughts right there in the middle of the soggy cross-country race, is the same Holy Spirit that Jesus left for my children. And that Spirit is with them in their race of life, whether I am next to them or not.
