I’ve spoken before on the difficulty of measuring the day-to-day success of a mother. There isn’t a standard. Let’s give a little background on me… I was a good student. A very good student, in fact. Except that I’m female, standardized testing seems to be written specifically for me. I liked getting good grades because everyday, there was a red alphabet letter at the top of my work, showing whether or not my work met the established standards. This lasted from age 3 in preschool to age 23 in grad school, when abruptly, I graduated, got a job, and I stopped getting consistent evaluations. It was painful! I was equipped to be measured, and people stopped measuring me. That was hard! Now my work is FAR more important than what I trained in school to do. I spend time with my kids. And there isn’t any measurement system for that either. Most people just hope their kids will be amazing people in 18 years. Several of you have commented on the lack of measurements for motherhood as well. I’ve decided that there aren’t mothering measures, not because they haven’t been developed yet, but because they don’t exist. Many of us fabricate some to help ourselves feel better, but we should be willing to admit that they are no more than fabrications.

Will it matter if my house was clean? If I kept a schedule or not? If my kids can talk by a certain age and potty train by a certain age? If Matt and I ate pizza 4 out of 7 nights last week? (we actually did, let’s all cringe together: <shudder>). The answer is very simple: YES and NO. How do you like them apples? 🙂 The thing is, it does matter where I spend my time and what I do with my days. It does. I can make small choices every day and they can be good or bad choices, and I’m in charge around here from 8am to 5pm, so my choices matter. But in the grand scheme of things, it won’t matter that I washed half my dishes, then quit to write this post. The important things for my family are did we love each other? Did we listen? Do we care about each others’ experiences? Do we model grace? Do our kids know that they are safe and loved here? Do they offer safety, love, and grace to others? Do we find purpose and meaning? I care VERY much about all of that! But there isn’t an easy stamp of approval way to determine whether we are getting there. I’m hoping that in 25 years, I’ll have 2 strong children who function well on their own and are active participants in the Kingdom of God. But no one thing that I do is going to accomplish that goal because it takes their entire childhood and beyond for God to allow them to experience all He intends to use to grow them. So yes and no. It all matters, but not as much as I might think it does.

I’ve been thinking about the idea of a to do list. My mom is really into these. They serve a purpose because there is something cathartic about crossing something off to show, Hey, I did something here! But have you noticed? Everything can (not must, but can) become a to do list, even hobbies! I have the first 2.5 months of pictures of the babies stuck down in my scrapbook. The pages look beautiful: the papers are fun, the pictures are gorgeous, the themes make sense, the chronology of events is set… it’s a piece of art. It fulfills my inner journalist and it makes me happy to do it. But 20 pages aren’t yet labeled. So I enforced a rule on myself: I can’t stick down any more pictures or make any new pages until I label what I have because I can’t remember what to write when I have so many pictures unlabeled! I need to write it down if I want to remember. But now, I’ve set rules about how I can do my hobby! And that makes it not as fun. Necessary, but not as fun.

My time with the babies has a built-in mental to do list: they eat a certain amount a certain number of times, they get diapered a certain number of times, we play a certain number of times, they sleep a certain number of times… check. But when I think about the babies, I don’t think about lists. I think about 2 beautiful people who smile and interact and want desperately to sit upright without tipping over and who crack me up everyday. They are exploring their world, and it’s hilarious! They found their toes awhile back and those were fun. Then they moved up to their legs… oh whee! Legs! But now they are continuing to explore upward and we have the unique challenge of diapering them without letting them explore their diaper area, even though they really want to know how their legs get attached to the rest of their body! It’s a rather messy prospect to have tiny hands reaching into a dirty diaper you are trying to dispose of as quickly and easily as possible!

I could reduce my life to lists. We watched these movies. We ate at these restaurants. We had these friends. We owned these things. Check check check. But that isn’t life. I’m beginning to hate lists. It isn’t that I don’t need to get a certain number of things done in a day, because I do. But I want to frame my thoughts around life as a whole and the beauty of spending it with the people I’m with. Not lists. Because I won’t be any more valuable if I cook gourmet meals every night than if we start eating pizza 7 nights a week. I mean, that sounds gross, and I need a break from pizza for awhile as a result of last week, but the point is that it doesn’t change my value. I can be a good mom with a cluttered house. I’m a more peaceful and stress-free mom with a clean house, but the status of my house doesn’t establish my value. Neither does the way I spend my time. Neither does my to do list. Neither does my college education.

So what does makes me valuable? I tend to think our value is intrinsic because we are made in God’s image. We are valuable because God considers us to be. There is a directionality to that… some people think that God chooses people of value. Nope, it’s the other way. God’s choice of us is what makes us valuable. It is hard to not have a measuring stick I can hold up to know if I’m momming well. I’m reading Grace Based Parenting by Dr. Tim Kimmel and let me just say, it is a breath of fresh air! I can’t recommend this book enough. It doesn’t tell me a list of things to do to guarantee great kids. It shows me how to frame my thoughts about Matt and I and our kids within the larger view of God’s gracious parenting of us as His children. I can avoid parenting my kids out of fear or guilt or manipulation or legalism or judgment and parent them out of grace.  And grace gives plenty of options rather than the “do this or you are a horrible parent” model that so many people buy into.  So I’m learning how to mom, but grace in its truest form isn’t a measuring stick at all. I’m learning that I don’t need a measuring stick, as long as I know my work and my status don’t define who I am. I don’t need to do to be valuable. I need to be. I am Jaime, follower of Christ, wife of Matt, mom of Zach and Rissa, and valuable person with interests, thoughts, doubts, fears, and triumphs. And that is enough.