Lowering expectations

where I am.

I’m sitting on our couch with empty picture frames on my left waiting to be filled. There’s a box of books piled on the floor to my right waiting for a new book shelf. My daughter’s drawings scattered on the floor in front of me. I could go on… more moving boxes to be dealt with in the study, piled up laundry, bushes outside to be trimmed.

This is my week off.

I had lots of plans to “catch-up.” To fill those picture frames at the very least. But here I sit, feeling so nauseous. Coffee makes me want to puke. All I want to do is curl up in a ball and eat pickles. There’s only so much you can do with first-trimester queasiness hitting you hard.

Today, I’m 7 weeks pregnant with our second child 🙂

This past weekend my husband and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary. Whew! I’ve been married to my best friend for 10 years.

We stayed in a mountain house overlooking a beautiful waterfall for a few days. It was a vacation we’d been looking so forward to. And it was a vacation marked by low expectations that I had to keep lowering. I had very little energy. Nothing sounded good to eat. No coffee… no alcohol… no hot date in my pretty red dress.

To top it off, the airbnb had a number of problems I won’t go into here. The book I borrowed from the library to read was terrible. There were some tears shed, and big smiles too. It was a lovely, much less-than-perfect trip.

Which leads me to…

grief

Last night, I grieved.

I grieved my “not-enoughness.”

In light of my new pregnancy, I grieved how I wouldn’t be everything I wanted to be for my kids.

I grieved how I would let them down, how they would let me down, how we both would disappoint and miss the mark. No family is perfect; I dreaded what might haunt us in the future. I wondered what my kids might say about me to their future therapists: what the relational ruptures would look like, what I would do or not do that might cause harm.

Maybe it’s the family therapy work that I do… maybe it’s me being too hard on myself… maybe I’m just facing the realities of parenting and raising children on this side of heaven.

lowering expectations in motherhood

The reality is, this pregnancy will culminate with so much joy and struggle (thinking about labor here). It will stretch me (literally) and expose even more of my “not-enoughness,” my inability to meet every single need in family, friendships, and in work.

I can’t do it all now. My limits already scream in my face. My attention already feels split. How much more this will be going from one child to two.

My only option then, if I will stay sane, is to keep lowering the expectations. To keep being ok with my bare minimum: to just show up. If I do this, my kids will (Lord willing) stay fed, clothed (maybe not every day), and alive. And maybe I’ll keep my job too.

I’ll let go of my pride and say ‘I’m sorry’ when I get things wrong. I’ll model what it looks like to try hard and be messy. I’ll love hard even when it hurts. I’ll try my very best not to control and apologize when I do. I’ll let go of high hopes and be ok with what unfolds.

Praise the Lord for this new baby because out of all the things that will push me to rely solely on God’s grace, this precious gift inside of me might just move me a little farther in that direction. This beautiful life who will demand so much of me again… who will keep me up at night… who will be attached to my boob while I run around with my toddler… who will draw me even more into the beautiful grace of the Father.

I am not enough.

But the Father and his grace are enough.

This is enough for me.