MAMA SAID: A WORD TO THE WISE IS SUFFICIENT

Mama Said: A Word to the Wise Is Sufficient by Cornelia Wills - Paperback

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I still struggle with comparison but that book gave me some great tracks to run on when I see it rearing its ugly head. Fight comparison with all your might. In addition to fighting comparison, choose to embrace life as it is. Stop fighting what God has put in front of you and embrace the hardship. Even though your days may not look like what you though they would, tell yourself that this is the day the Lord has made. I want to rejoice and be glad in everything that comes with it Psalm I was able to put aside my expectations and embrace that God is in the details.

Embrace who your child is.

Focus on the Family Commentaries

Embrace it all and do your best to not wish for something different. I turned a big corner when I got to this point. It took a while and I still struggle to do this but once I learned how to not fight my circumstances, life got a lot better. Fight to stay in the present. The what ifs and unknowns can be paralyzing. I thought my experience of motherhood in the first few months was a taste of what my entire life was going to feel like hence forth. I was paralyzed by how I would function as a mom in the future.

He gave them just what they needed for THAT day and no more. His mercies are new every morning Lam 3: What a promise and blessing! While getting the big picture is super important, I love practical, concrete advice. Based on my experience and on those who have struggled through those first few months of motherhood, here are some tangible things that might help.

Force yourself to be around people—especially other moms. For some this is easy and even a lifeline. For others, this is harder and takes more effort. Sweet mama, if I could show up at your doorstep right now and go for a walk, I would. Because I know how life-giving being around other people is. It takes the focus off of yourself and your baby and reminds you that there is a world going on outside of your stress-hole. Yes, I just said that because that is what it feels like. Reach out, get out, and speak out. Let the sun shine on that pale body, rev up your allergies by taking a walk in a park, strap on that baby carrier and go for a walk.

Your body will thank you and your heart will be refreshed. Make it a discipline to be outside at least once a day. Enter the mom guilt mentioned above for even making this a practical step, but the struggling mamas will understand. This especially applies to those with fussy babies. For me, this would remind me what I truly do feel and put things in perspective a bit. Reminding yourself of the maternal love you have for your little one often will trump the increasing negative feelings.

This only perpetuates the sense of guilt and loneliness in struggling moms; and I want to free moms up to be honest and open if they are struggling. When I write about struggling in motherhood, moms come out of the woodwork and identify with the pain. My hope is that this post shines some light in a dark place if that is where you are and lets you know that you are not alone. Not only are there other moms out there struggling, but you have a God who knows you, knows your pain, knows your heart and walks with you daily.

God is our ever-present help in trouble. If you are in the same boat and wanting some verses to remind you of truth, we have put together some verse cards just for moms. Rachel and I hand-picked 25 verses that we found to be encouraging and helpful in our journey through motherhood. We had them designed and put together as a easy printable for you or for a gift to someone who may need them. Make sure to swing by our page that shares more about our On the Job Meditations for Moms.

I hope and pray that they can be a blessing to you or someone you love. Your email address will not be published. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. I really loved the article. I have been also referring to https: Hope this helps your readers as well. My 6 week old was diagnosed with reflux and a milk allergy.

She has been prescribed meds and is on a new formula. Due to complications she has been on formula since the day she was born. She is constantly crying and I am alone with her for over 9 hours a day. Today she cried for almost 4 hours. I broke down and cried right along with her. I feel guilty and helpless for bringing her into this world to suffer and that I am a horrible mum for not being able to know what she needs. It feels like there is no end in sight. A friend of mine sent this to me at just the right time. Thank you for this, it was very helpful!

Always love hearing that this post is helpful to others. I knew it would be hard but this is nothing like I had pictured. I constantly hope time flies and she is a few months old already so things could get better. This post helped me calm my anxiety big time. This always makes us so happy to hear that moms like you find this blog post.

I hope some of the verses Polly shared can help give you ongoing hope. God gave you your baby and he is right there with you, helping you and teaching you. May he bless you during this time of trial. I read this post recently when I was really struggling being mum my three month old. Thanks so much for this, it was the perfect encouragement for that moment.

Reading this really lifted me. This article has really been a comfort to me more than once. This resulted in an overtired baby all day everyday. I went from being a very active, outdoor loving, nurse to stay at home mom overnight. It feels like my whole identity is now being a mom. Thank you for the article.

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Thank you for reminding me God gives us just enough manna for one day at a time and to stop worrying about the next naptime or bedtime. Thanks so much for your honesty in this post. Parenthood is harder than I expected, and I struggle with mom guilt, anxiety, and depression. My four month old also has a bad case of acid reflux. Thanks for sharing about your experience and what has helped. This is exactly what I needed and exactly how I feel.

I just cried reading this whole thing. I have milk supply issues, so I top up with formula. That alone causes me feelings of inadequacy. So today I cried for the first time since day 4 crazy postpartum day4. And your article has given me renewed hope! Thank you for saying the truth for us mommas!!

Thank you so so much for blogging this! My world has been turned upside down by my 6 week old and I found myself nodding vigorously to every thought you penned as I read them! Thank God for you and for 2 Corinthians 1: I just wanted to say this article is exactly what I needed to hear. I have struggled so much with depression, anxiety and bitterness.

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All I can do is pray to survive and get through this and that God gives me the strength to do it. Thank you for reaching out! Hi Maisie, thank you for your vulnerability. May God grant you the strength and perseverance and patience you need to weather this storm. And may you lean into Him more and more as you do. Warmly, Rachel and Polly. I am not usually one to ever comment on a blog-post I come across, but thank you so very much for your openness and honesty!

I very much needed to read this today! I came across your post just today, and I definitely can relate to it. I am a first time mom. My daughter was born prematurely and had acid reflux most of her first year. We did have one or two scary incidents after her first birthday, but in general, she is getting better and better everyday. I struggled with a newborn and postpartum depression for a year right after she was born. During that time, I always wondered what was wrong with me. For Cannon it was just another day: In fact, most days I feel confidence. While he is not even on most neurological development bell curves, this little guy has come so far since his diagnosis.

On his third birthday he had a few words, but today he has lots of words, hundreds of them. Those are the two lanes that special needs parents travel this journey in: One has the scenic view of patience and hope and gratitude for the littlest things — and all of those sentiments are so real and genuine, you never want to leave that lane. And then, in the very next moment, I feel guilty for wishing it was different, as if I do not love my son fully and completely as the exact little boy he is.

But then I want him to have a friend to celebrate his birthday with him so badly the tears can barely be held in. Back and forth, drifting between the emotions that are opposite one another, but both completely true. God, if there is any other way, please do it. You are the Creator and Sustainer of all, you could change this!

You could make another way! And the one thing Jesus begged God to do differently became the best thing that ever happened to any of us. At this juncture, there are many days when it is hard to imagine how the struggles of a little boy could lead to something good. But then again, we are still waiting for the rest of the story, too.

Talk:Spanish proverbs

We live with the promise of Heaven, sealed by the one thing God did not take from his son. My culinary accomplishments max out at chocolate chip cookies that are not flat or overcooked, an achievement that is still one I pat myself on the back for. And while I have yet to put much in to practice, I do love a good cooking show and have watched enough Top Chef to learn a few things about the basics of culinary excellence, my favorite among those tenants being the concept of mise en place.

It means all of the necessary utensils are ready, the pots and pans are out, and the oven is preheated. For the chef, mise en place is all about being prepared. The image that first comes to my mind is my big white desk. I love this desk. It is beat up and scratched, the middle drawer is broken and the whole thing needs to be sanded and re-painted, but this desk has been good to me. This desk would be the first thing that goes on my mise en place list. Next would be my coffee. Then I would probably light a candle, because I write mostly early in the morning, and those pre-dawn hours are complimented so beautifully by the company of a pretty candle.

And finally my computer, placed gently in the middle of it all. Of course the house would have to be quiet, because I tend to need total silence to write anything decent. And as mentioned, it would be about 5: Yes, this is a good mise en place. And I think one of the biggest problems plaguing writers and creators of all kinds, is that we think we need that in order to write.

I have spent so much time pinning pictures of writing spaces or researching the best planners, hoping that if I can just organize what writing looks like it will somehow inspire the words in a new way. They are usually in bed, often with a decorative throw blanket nearby for some color and if they are really spiritual, an open Bible, too. I meant no offense if you have recently taken that very picture.

I am that girl. It is so much easier to just take the pretty picture, and in the meantime, see what everyone else is doing with what was supposed to be my writing time. But like so much of life, writing has proven to me again and again how low-maintenance its friendship is, and that it simply does not need all that much in place. When I think about all of the writing I have done for the last eight years, I would have completed virtually none of it if I had waited until everything was in its perfect place. Thinking that I need more than I already have in order to write is writing from a place of scarcity.

But knowing, believing, and being confident that I already have far more than I need is looking at what is right in front of me and seeing the generosity of it all, and then writing from a place of abundance. For me, the creative process has been so generous and so forgiving, and also so unpredictable.

When I am constantly looking, always learning, and disciplined enough to be writing in as many margins as I can find, that is usually when the best words come to life. Mise en place is an ethic, a mindset, that I love. I do my best to live, learn, pray, write, and repeat. And I keep at it, wanting all the stories I tell to point back to One who gave them to me. Parenting is going to leave all of us speechless at some point: In our home, some of the harder questions started coming about six months ago, when our month old son surpassed our three-year-old son by a noticeable margin in speech and development.

As that margin grew and grew, Harper noticed, too. Everyone in the whole world learns differently.

Some people learn really fast and some people take a bit longer. But I think we both felt the incompleteness. But why is everything so much harder for Cannon? The why question has had its way with me in the last two years. Why is there pain, disability, sickness, and death in the world at all? Harper may not have been asking at that philosophical level, but she will be soon, whether it be about her brother, her own sin, or something else that she sees, hears, or experiences.

After much searching and reading and praying and talking to people far wiser than me, hoping for an eloquent explanation, for words that would ease the tension I constantly felt, the answer is actually as simple as it has always been: That is the why. It turns out that it is as straightforward - and yet lived out as incredibly complicated - as that. And this is most certainly what God has showed me in the last two years. I knew about life in a fallen world. We've all seen and experienced the pain that comes from original sin. But I was having an exceptionally hard time finding the words to explain it.

These four commonly used points became so helpful — it gave me a language for what I have always known but could not find the words for. The Biblical Narrative is the big story of the Bible — a very short summary of Genesis to Revelation — and it is a tool that can help you use gospel language with your kids every day. In our home, the conversations often begin with a question or hard topic that we have to explain to our children: Why did Granpda die? Why does my brother have a disability? Why did that friend leave me out? Why do we yell at one another? We frame all of these conversations by starting with creation: Then we talk about the fall , and how sin entering the world changed everything.

Sin is why life is hard, sin is why we can be terrible to one another, and sin is why we need a Savior. Then we bring in the good news that Jesus redeemed us, and that is why we can have hope in this world in spite of the sin in our hearts and the hard things that might happen to us. In his book Parenting, Paul David tripp said this: You simply cannot tell this story to your children enough. Talk to them about how Wisdom came to rescue fools so that fools would become wise. I hope we can tuck them in our Bibles or tape them on our refrigerators, and find every opportunity possible to tell our kids, and tell ourselves in the process, our story of rescue, again and again and again.

The envelope sat on my desk for three weeks before I opened it. I had seen the return address right when I pulled it out of the mailbox, The Department of Health and Social Services logo with the name of our assigned social worker from the Developmental Disabilities Administration. He was also not very kind, that specialist, but I leave that part out. The diagnosis paperwork is 11 pages of hard for me, line after line of quantification and qualification of a sweet little boy that I think falls far short of capturing him, but to any objective observer is frustratingly accurate.

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None of this is what I pictured four years ago, when we opened a gift on Christmas day and saw a little blue blanket inside. I think maybe that is why I cried for most of that first year, because when reality keeps running head first into a hard heart, it hurts.

Reality needs a soft place to land and I would not, could not, give it one. You got familiar with Italy. All of your friends are sharing beautiful pictures from Italy and you really want to be in Italy. You want to hear your little boy sing in the preschool Christmas program with other three year olds, not fill out DDA paperwork. There is a list items long that you would rather be doing than the work in front of you, and I think it is ok to acknowledge that. Sarah wanted children in her youth, God gave her Isaac when she was years old. Jeremiah wanted anything but the work of a prophet, God gave him words that would be cherished and studied by believers for the rest of earthly history.

Paul wanted to go with Silas to Asia to share the gospel, God re-directed him to Greece and brought the gospel to Europe for the first time. And at some point we have to decide what gets our time, our energy, and our prayers: How we answer that with our lives will change everything — perhaps most importantly it will change how you see what must be done. But taken all together, I love having a list of things to set my eyes on, and I super love checking things off of those lists.

My days begin with the space to think. They just have to for me — in the quiet, before anyone else is up, working around thoughts in my head about scripture, about Jesus, about words and meanings, about my children and my husband and whether or not I am stewarding these things in a manner that is honoring to God and reflective of who this is all for anyway. I have been going through this goal-planner again this year, and one of the things you are asked to do is choose a word for the year. I wrote down about a dozen to start with, things like diligence, joy, learn, family, and trustworthy.

And then the word consistent came to mind, and I could not let it go. Consistent means to be marked by harmony, regularity or steady continuity. It is a characteristic given to someone or something that is free from variation or contradiction, showing steady conformity to character, profession, belief, or custom. And consistent is everything I want to be. When I get real introspective, and real honest, and I take apart the big pieces of my life, I can see just how in-consistent I really am. My mood - and my actions to follow - can shift and change a few dozen times a day based on things like social media do people like me?

I love my husband inconsistently, usually showing him respect and displaying affection well for him when I am having a particularly good day myself. I parent my children inconsistently, again, usually doing the hard work of teaching and disciplining well and getting on the floor to play with them when I am having a particularly good day myself. Jesus has to be my steady. And the gospel has to be the thermostat of my marriage, my parenting, and the way I love others. Consistent means to me that I am not a walking contradiction, saying one thing but living out another. It means that I am the same person to everyone; whether she is like me or not, whether he is easy to love or not, whether she can give me anything in return or not.

The partiality of the world we live in is feeling further and further from a kingdom-mindset to me all the time — perhaps that is because it is? It means that what someone sees on social media is what they will see in real life. It means that my husband will not have to guess how loved he is going to be on a particular day. It means that my children will remember their mom as someone who was the same to them in the public eyes of the church lobby and the private hallways of our home at night.

And it means the work I do in this world will reflect the only investments that will always, always bring a good return: So this year, my prayer and goal is that the mark of my life is consistency. That my joy is contingent on the unchanging good news of the gospel and not the trending good or bad news of any particular day.

That others know what they can expect from me. That my heart never loses the awe that I am saved by grace and not by merit. And that I am unwavering in my pursuit of seeing and savoring the goodness and glory of God in my every day, walking around, mothering and errand-running, cleaning and writing, bill-paying and diaper-changing life. I stared back at him, unsure of what he really meant and how to take it. My silence was enough. Sometimes parenting leaves all kinds of room for misunderstandings and taking offense.

I thought the kids did awesome, and I thought Cannon had a blast. It was a great time. That we have to always be prepared to work. Of course, Alex was right. He had just spent the better part of an hour micro-managing almost every aspect of our trip to the pool.

And each time, Cannon would only pick up speed and continue sprinting from the concrete to the shallow entrance, with a smile across his face a mile wide. Nonetheless, it was work.

When Cannon would not walk on the slippery pool edge, Alex would get out with him, grab the buckle strap of his water wings, and force him to slow down all the while repeating the command: Cannon never seemed distressed, he never threw a fit about being held back. That sweet boy was having the time of his life at the pool, and we loved seeing the joy on his face. But when all around you other parents are warning their young children to slow down and walk, and those kids forcefully slow their steps even when everything in them wants to run, you see it — you see the autism.

And you feel it. You feel the autism. And you wonder, will we ever get there? To that place when you tell your child to do something, and they just… do it? Of course they still had to actually study it, but whoever the authors were felt confident enough in their guesses that it was worth sufficiently scaring parents everywhere about the iPad. And there is one of the latest P. And of course there are the less stretching potential causes: I am not sure who or what to blame for autism. The far more important question for us to ask is this: Our first red flag with Cannon was his speech.

He was always quiet, and he has remained quiet. Our little guy never really developed words: He did go through a few months where he stopped saying even the four or five sounds he did have, but the regression was minor compared to the level he had ever initially attained. He started speech therapy at nineteen months old he hated it , we moved to the Early Intervention Services and added occupational therapy to his repertoire he tolerated it and by two years old we knew what we were looking at. He was rarely responding to his name. He could not follow simple commands.

There are so many moments in those months that stick out in my mind. Like just before his second birthday when I had him on my hip at the refrigerator. I knew what he wanted, he had pulled me over to the door which was his clear indication for milk. After a dozen requests, I started to cry. It was all so painful, to say that A-word out loud and know it belongs to your child. I was living on the brink of tears every single day. Autism falls under the broad category of Pervasive Development Disorders. This is how I very un-scientifically define it:.

If we think of the brain like a map, directing information, feelings, language and emotions to their correct places, I think of the autistic brain like a map with holes in it. The information may start where it is supposed to, but pretty quickly runs into a big hole and has no idea where to go next, so it either falls into the hole and disappears, or it takes a wrong turn and ends up in the wrong place. And every single brain with autism has holes of different sizes.

And all this means that sometimes the holes are not at all in the way of where you're going, and other times they mean you cannot get there at all. The map might have a hole where the information is actually supposed to start, so it never gets going. Some kids have no words and not even any sounds, so there is very likely a large hole right where language was supposed to begin. Maybe the holes are in emotional regulation.

Maybe they are in sensory processing. And maybe the holes are two steps in to the journey or maybe they are further down the road, allowing the child to start without any issues, but then running into a hard stop at an unpredictable moment. He used to talk quite a bit, why did he stop? And how big these holes are may indicate how long it takes to recover from getting lost or falling in. For others, the whole afternoon might be lost to a meltdown, or months of progress derailed.

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