Recently, in the days that the whole "Are You Mom Enough?" debate broke out, I confess that I regarded the whole thing with a bit of
indifference. My mind was already abuzz
with its own justified indignation about motherhood and the media. And it was
not about the infamous Time cover. It was about this article and the link I
followed from Facebook to the Huffington post summation.
The condensed article focuses on the thirty best countries
in which to be a mother, with only a passing mention of Niger , which is
last on the list in terms of suitability for mothering. The discussion that followed the article was
all about how it seems implausible that the U.S. should rank 25th in
the statistics and what we should do to fix that.
I immediately wanted to know more about this survey and the
other 116 countries that fell behind these top 30 in the rankings. Turns out
the survey was actually conducted by Save the Children and its intent was not
to turn another cog in the Mommy Wars wheel over whether Norwegian mothers with
two years maternity leave are enjoying a better brand of motherhood than
American mothers with minivans and soccer schedules. Its purpose was to highlight the other 116
countries in less developed nations and the plight of mothers therein. But, it
seemed to me anyway, no one was paying attention.
Then there was that blazing headline plastered everywhere,
“Are You Mom Enough?” I confess that I
hardly glanced at the picture through my tiny cell phone internet screen and
barely related the Dr. Sears headline I had seen mentioned online to that
article until I began to see the responses of a few friends.
These two items and the life I am living tumbled around in
my mind for a few days and I struggled to piece it all together. They tumbled
and jumbled with my thoughts about the fact that when we left for this mission,
I had a ticket home dated this week. A ticket home to welcome the third
trimester of a much awaited pregnancy that ended abruptly four days before we
left. They tumbled around with my growing anxiety about the impending date of
my Bryce’s would-be third birthday. They mixed their way in with images of
orphans and sick, hot babies strapped to their mommies’ backs while they walk
for hours to secure provisions for their families.
And suddenly, I found myself very angry. Angry at the very notion of “Are You Mom
Enough?” whether it was pointing its ugly finger at attachment parenting or any
other aspect of mothering.
The very idea that motherhood could be made into a
competition is infuriating. But the bigger picture, the picture no one seemed
to be seeing is that the very idea of parenting philosophies, of choices in
motherhood that involve anything more than sheer survival are a luxury, a
blessing afforded by relative affluence to mothers in developed cultures.
Tag that question onto these images of motherhood and feel
its shallowness, feel the punch in your gut:
I have been pregnant three times in the last four years and
I have no baby in my arms. No baby to choose to nurse and for how long. Am I
mom enough?
The chance of becoming the mother of a dead baby in Niger , Africa
is 1 in 1. Meaning that every woman who risks motherhood will eventually be the
mother of at least one dead baby. Are they mom enough?
Last week, I invited an indigenous mother in out of the rain
with her sweet baby girl. She was sick. She was wet. And she had been carried
on her mother’s back for eight hours to town to receive money from a government
fund that it turns out wasn’t available. That mother sat on my porch and nursed
her wet, tired baby without reserve. Because she’s mom enough? Or because she
needs to survive?
I rode the bus the other day with a mom whose baby had such
bad cold and conjunctivitis that her upper eye lids were almost swollen shut.
She struggled to nurse her in a hot, crowded bus with men standing over the top
of her and her baby sweating profusely in her arms. She wanted to buy tamales
from a man on the bus and was humiliated when she misunderstood how much they
cost and did not have enough money to pay for them, so had to return them while
her hungry toddler was reduced to tears at her side. Is she mom enough?
My friend who helps me in my house two days week asked me
the other day if she could take three pencils from my children’s school supply
box for her son. He has been in school for four months without a pencil to
write with. She can’t read the notes that come home from school so doesn’t know
if he needs anything else and she could not afford to buy it anyway. Is she mom
enough?
I spent five days at an orphanage in Nicaragua with kids who
are not really orphans at all but who have been turned over to this place by
families who could not afford to feed them, care for them, educate them. I
watched a mom come early one morning for her two teenaged daughters who have lived
at the home all of their lives. She turned them over when her husband abandoned
her and the children and she was unable to find work or a place for them to
live. But every Saturday morning she gets up at 5 am and walks four hours to
see them and, if there is enough food, to bring them home with her for the weekend.
Because she’s mom enough?
And what about the “tias” who daily provide care for little
girls who know no other way of life than living like this, in this home with
other children who are not their brothers and sisters, cared for by people who
are not their family. They rise at 6am to get little heads brushed and bodies
dressed for school. They lead those babies to God’s Word as they feed them
breakfast. They study with them and teach them life skills in the afternoons.
They feed them and bathe them and sleep by their sides at night. And they love
them. They love them so well. They fill these little lives with confidence and
trust and openness. Are they mom enough?
The truth is, they are not. Sometimes, all that love is
enough to replace what’s missing, what’s broken in these little lives and it
results in the three children now studying together in a university in Managua . But sometimes it
is not. Sometimes the brokenness is just too much to overcome.
Mothers will do their best all over the world to be mom
enough tonight. And some of them will still hold a lifeless baby in their arms
in morning. They will nurse a baby with each little whimper all night long and
tuck that little one up next to them to sleep. And they will still wake to dirt
floors and not enough food and babies whose intestines are filled with worms
and parasites. A mother will look into
the eyes of her hungry baby and make the choice to hand it over to someone who
may be able care for that little one better than her. And she may never know if it was enough.
The truth I think we would all do well to admit is that none
of us is enough. No mothering style or parenting philosophy is enough to
overcome the sin, the brokenness and the death that plagues humanity. Mothers
have a special role in lessening that burden for the children they are gifted,
but alone, they are not enough. As much as we love our babies, none of us, rich
or poor, well or sick, capable or incapable, are enough to take the weight of our
children’s brokenness on our shoulders, the weight of the children of the world,
and be pierced through by their needs, nailed to the wood of a cross to save
them from death. None of us can open to them the gates of the only place that
will ever be enough, the only place they will ever know perfect love.
With that knowledge, we, the mothers, become clinging, needy
little ones, grasping tight to the breast of our Savior and begging for His
sustenance. We are not enough. But He is. And He knows the hearts of all these
mothers all over the world struggling to be what these little ones need. And He feeds them and loves them and binds up
their wounds when we cannot.
There are moms all over the world who will never be enough.
Never enough to fill their babies bellies, never enough to heal them from their
illnesses, never enough to build them a warm house or buy them the books they
need to learn. And yet they mother as best they can. And they need someone to
tell them about the loving Savior who fills in where they cannot and makes all
things new. And the ones most
well-equipped to do that are not the moms who are “mom enough”. They are the
ones who know all too well that they are not enough, who know the sting of want
and need and loss.
I am not mom enough. Love as I might, I could not breathe
life into these last three little ones my heart so longs to hold. As painful as
it may be, I am grateful for that knowledge. Because every time I look into the
eyes of a mother feeling the terrible weight of not being enough, I pray that
they see in my brokenness the One who is enough. Because He is waiting to rush in and be all
that we, His little ones, needs. He who
more than enough, He who is everything.
