motherhood Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

When Your Heart is Hard Toward Your Child

hard heart

It was a long season of unrelenting conflicts. Day after day, they beat on me like a hot sun until I felt like I had all but dried up. My heart was baked hard and impenetrable, drawn out from my body like clay from a kiln.

I did not like this child of mine, not really, and any emotional feelings of love I had once known had long cemented into bare obligation. Fissures of anger and frustration ran through me like fault lines; I felt at any moment, I would break.

Of all my children, this one had challenged me the most. We rubbed each other against the grain until static sparked. And I was weary of it. The constant friction had skinned me of any tenderness, compassion, or delight until I had little toleration for even minor infractions or personality differences.

I had become quick to anger, slow to speak praise, resentful, irritable, and everything else that love is not. I had become everything I never thought I’d be as a mother.

There was a deadness in me that was terrifying, ugly, and shameful. I knew it. I felt it, heavy and horrifying within me. I thought about the unspeakable damage I was doing to this child by being overly critical and harsh. Why, God? I cried. Why did you give me this child if I was going to mess it up this bad?

But I had no idea how to change it. Maybe it was already too late. Can a dead heart beat again? Can something so hard become soft once more?

hardened heart

Then one day, everything shattered. It was the same battle we had fought before, on repeat. Only this time, I had nothing left. No margin, no buffer, no grace. What may have been normal childish behavior felt to me like willful disobedience and purposeful provocation.

It felt personal.

When my husband came home from work, I was so upset, I could barely speak, and what I could say was vile. “You have to handle this,” I said, “or I am going to say something I shouldn’t.”

He went to our child’s room and talked in low, patient tones, the kind I didn’t seem to have in my settings anymore. Then, a long while later, he found me. I didn’t want to talk about it, yet somehow, I ended up telling him everything. He listened until my anger slowly distilled into its true form: fear.

I was so afraid.

I was afraid of what I felt in my heart, afraid of who I was becoming, afraid of the trajectory of my relationship with this kid if I could not get a grip on this, and so afraid that I would not be able to fix it.

All that fear came bubbling out. Even shame could not hold it down, even though I wished it could. It is a wretched thing to vomit up all the bile in your soul. But once I started, I couldn’t stop.

“I think one day you’ll be great friends,” my husband said quietly when I was done. “But this is not something you can fix.”

In my frustration and bitterness, I had forgotten that. I didn’t want to ask God for help because I didn’t want him to know I needed it.

That changed the minute I confessed my struggle out loud. There in the bedroom before God and my husband, everything that had been stuffed into the hidden places of my heart was hauled out into the light. It was shocking. Unholy. Disgraceful.

And freeing.

What else could I be afraid of? What guilt could torment me and hold me down? I had already said it all.

A little space opened up in that stone of a heart for life to pulse. For the first time in a long time, I felt the heartbeat of hope. Perhaps it was not too late for God to raise the dead.

There was no Lazarus awakening, no sudden transformation, but only a slow softening, like spring. In fact, I found it hard to pray at first. I was still raw, and it’s hard to pray over the hurting places with any amount of faith that one day, it will be different.

But it only takes a little bit of faith to melt a heart of stone, and God was willing to supply it. The more I softened, the more I could pray, and the more I prayed, the more God rebuilt the relationship I thought was destined to failure.

Slowly, God began to show me the beautiful blessings of having a child so unlike me. The friction that created sparks in our relationship also sharpened us and drew us both closer to Christ. I needed this kid to be exactly the way God created them to be.

What started out as a set of circumstances that hardened my heart turned out to be the single greatest thing God has used in my life to grow it. Big ol' broken heart

Perhaps you have been in a difficult season of parenting, and you feel devoid of any joy toward the child you bore. Your heart is hard, and you wonder if there’s anything that can ever change that.

I’m here to tell you there is hope for you, mama, and grace. It is never too late for God to soften your heart and restore the relationship you have with your child. God will do the work.

What is keeping you from running to him for help? What is holding you back?
Perhaps today is the day to lay down your anger, guilt, and frustration. Perhaps today is the day to let God begin mending your heart.

The Sweet Middle

The sweet middle

He sidles up to me and takes my hand as we walk along past the reclusive tiger and the shaggy sloth bear. The sun tosses freckles across my son’s nose, and the air hugs us close.

His palms are rough from dirt-clod making and fort building. They are sweaty and sticky with boyhood, and I try not to wonder if he washed his hands after touching the snake.

He is seven, and the babyhood has stretched right out of his face. He tells me he knows how to spell “Mississippi.” It’s a secret he’s been saving for just such an occasion. “Oh yeah?” I taunt. “Show me.”

And he does.

“M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I.” Micah flashes the toothy smile of a second grader whose teeth are too big for his face.

My nose stings with the sudden urge to spill hot tears all over the pathway through Asia because it’s almost over—this salty-sweet season of his childhood is almost over. I squeeze my son’s hand tighter and look down into his thinning face and wonder if this will be the last time, the last time he puts his hand into mine and skips along next to me with cheerful acquiescence.

I won’t let go for anything in the world, snake smell or not.

Sweet season

We walk past the tree house playground. It is Way Past Naptime and the toddlers are eating wood chips and hurling sippy cups and using their words to communicate just how unlikely it is that they are going to leave willingly. The mamas are running on fishy crackers and juice pack fumes and looking every bit like they had no idea what they were getting into when their husbands said, “Honey, let me give you a massage.”

I want to stop and tell them that it is worth it. They are knee-deep in planting season, now, and torn up like a field in spring.

It is hard to imagine it will ever be any other way.

But I am just a few warm months further into the season, and those muddy, upturned fields are greening with the evidence of a work well done. I hold onto my son’s sticky hand and know that by the grace of God, some of the things I planted are growing. (And by the grace of God, some of the things I planted are not). Beautiful leaves are unfolding where furrows once lay, and I have the hope of a harvest in fields I once fought to win.

It is so worth it.

Beautiful leaves are unfolding where furrows once lay

It is hard still; of course it is hard. The labor doesn’t stop when the babies are birthed. It just…changes. There are weeds to pull and plants to prune—but I look down at that boy by my side and realize we are working together now, most days. The child who once would have gone to the cross over apple juice is now my companion in the sowing.

This is the sweet middle season, when my babies are not quite babies, but they’re not quite grown. It is the respite between tantrums and dating. My kids don’t need me as much now, but they need me enough. I can sleep for eight hours straight because they’re not driving yet. They can do their own laundry, and the house stays cleaner even if the fridge is emptier.

They are learning to pull their own weeds and plant their own seeds and work with me on becoming who they were meant to be. We stand side-by-side in the same field, more friends than anything, striving for the same beautiful unfolding.

Oh, yes. It is worth it.

I watch a mama wrestle her child down from the curly slide. She is up to her boots in the mucky part of motherhood, and I know she feels it. But I want to tell her that she is almost there–almost to the season where she can see the worth of her work. One day soon, she will look down and realize she isn’t dragging anyone along behind.

She is walking side-by-side with her child, right through the sweet middle. And she won’t let go for anything in the world.

We stand side-by-side in the same field, more friends than anything, striving for the same beautiful unfolding

Crusts and Middles

Crusts

Crusts piled up on the cutting board in a neat mountain of crumbs and edges. Dark sides with white underbellies gathered to the side.

My knife cut away the unwanted bits, leaving perfect squares of pillowy, white middles. That was the best part of the bread—any kid could tell you that—and only the best, prettiest part of the bread could be used for tea sandwiches.

I filled those delicate slices with fluffy egg salad, cut them on the diagonal, and arranged them on a pretty glass cake stand.

But the crusts remained on my board, without purpose for the upcoming party. They were useless, discarded bits. The best had been taken, and the part that was left was not enough for anything good.

At least, that’s how it feels sometimes, like the best of you has been given away already, and the only thing left is the thing you don’t think is wanted.

The leftovers.

The crumbs.

The crusty, tough edges that even a teenager won’t touch.

The crusty, tough edges that even a teenager won’t touch

You are the mama who gave away her 20’s and 30’s to raise babies, and now they are growing and pushing into their own independence, and you feel as if your very middle has been cut out.

You are the military wife who gave up her own dreams to follow her husband from assignment to assignment. But now he’s retiring, full of ribbons and honor and federal holidays to honor him, but no one sees what you gave up, and no one understands how it feels when your country doesn’t need you anymore.

You are the woman who held on to a hope that never materialized, and now, now? You wonder if God really has anything for you in these years that are left.

You feel every bit like the boy on a hill, surrounded by thousands of grown-up men who are eager to fill their empty stomachs, and all you have are a few dried-out loaves and the fish that have spent the better part of the day sitting out in the heat of the sun.

“How much do you have?”

“Not much.”

“How much?”

“Just this little bit, and it’s not very good.”

“May I have it?”

You shift your feet from side to side and look down at your basket, afraid to show him the bits and edges, the browned parts that are left after the middles have been cut out.

But he reaches in with hands that are not afraid to touch, hands that know exactly what to do with leftovers, and he blesses it. It is a blessing that speaks something out of the nothing, that moves mountains into being and tosses galaxies farther than any human eye will ever see. It is the kind of blessing that cannot be quantified except by the leftovers.

“And they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.”

The soft middles don’t even make the story. But those broken pieces—the leftovers of the miracle–stand as a testimony to all time of the kind of God who knows what to do with the things that are small and foolish, old and broken, unchosen and castoff.

It is as if the entire story of redemption is one big smorgasbord, where all the leftovers get remade and served up in a glorious feast that makes even the hardest heart wonder.

It is the grain left around the edges of the field after the harvest that feeds the poor and draws a young widow to the feet of a kinsman redeemer. It is the remnant of a faithless people that prove the faithfulness of God. It is the last crumb that shakes the coffers and gives Jesus pause to praise a woman who did not hesitate to give the very last bit.

It is the crusts and edges that make up the story.

If you are the woman who wonders if anything good can come of what is left, if you’ve already used up your middles and only have the crusts–do not hold back from God. Open your basket and let the blessing rush in. He knows what to do with the leftovers. In fact, they are his favorite part.

crusts and middles