I am more than just a Mum
Motherhood has been a time where I have again desperately needed the Lord to remind me who I am, because on the outside my identity seems to have been radically redefined. So what follows is a series of challenges that I have faced and the truths that have set me free and kept me on course in true identity. Whether or not you are/have been/ hope to be a mother, I believe what follows are timeless truths that will bring freedom whatever stage of life you are at.
I had heard that one of the challenges of motherhood can be ‘losing your identity’. Friends had told me that at the school gates they are referred to, even greeted as ‘Thomas’ mum’, ‘Lucy’s mum’, often to the exclusion of other mothers even knowing their actual name. I didn’t have to wait until the school gates to experience this first hand. Only days into having a new babe a visiting midwife insisted on calling me ‘mum’ even after I twice asked her to please call me ‘Thea’. What a change to suddenly be known more as somebody’s mum than as your own person, with your own name and identity.
Even before having a baby, we have been convinced of the importance of I Am So Many Things for mothers. We have hoped wholeheartedly for mothers across the world to get hold of this book of easily digestible truths to dip into at such a pivotal and challenging time; both for ourselves and to pass on to our families. As we know, what we have is what we give and we can’t give something that we don’t have. So the more we are rooted in right understanding of who God says we are, the more we can feed these truths to or children and all those around us.
In our culture, it is normal to work, work, work and then if you have a baby, to suddenly find yourself at home alone all day, speaking gibberish. This is where I long for the community setup of an African village, where life happens collectively and having a baby doesn’t mean isolation. But we are where we are and we need to deal well with the head space of potential hours of solitude and the lies that can begin to whisper amidst the cooing conversations with a little one. Furthermore I have found that I don’t have so much time for long journalling sessions, but if I can quickly spot a lie that I am beginning to believe and nip it in the bud, it saves me from spiralling down.
So for me, the identity declarations in I Am So Many Things have become more important than ever and whether I sink or swim each day hinges on what I am believing.