I'm a new mom. My precious daughter is ten months old, and I have enjoyed every minute of her sweet life and count it a privilege that I am able to work from home and keep her home with me every day. However, I have to admit that there are aspects of motherhood for which I just wasn't prepared. Frumpiness is one of them.
You don't mean for it to happen. I used to look at moms of young kids and think, "Why is it that they want to stay in sweats all the time?" and "When I'm a mom, I won't forego makeup and fixing my hair. What must their husbands think?!" My naiveté and callousness embarrasses me today. Now I'm juggling caring full-time for an infant with teaching school full-time online. Those roles are coupled with trying to maintain a household at least to a level where we don't have to wear Haz-Mat suits in our home. At least not all the time. I've found that all these responsibilities, as much as I enjoy most of them, mean that I have less time to focus on taking care of myself- even bathing myself! This has left me with a bad case of the frumpies.
I get dressed and my clothes don't fit right. I'm ten months post-pregnancy, and still haven't lost all the baby weight. Judge if you will, but it makes wearing workout clothes much more appealing than jeans. When I do wear street clothes, they're invariably spotted with slobber, snot, spit-up, cracker crumbs, or some combination thereof. Fixing my hair is all about speed: whatever is the quickest way out the door because I'm five minutes late no matter where I'm headed. Makeup is something to be applied haphazardly while on the way to wherever I'm late to arrive- whether KayCee is driving or I. Undergarments and shoes these days are all about comfort. I hate to say it, but I'm fighting frumpy all the time.
I start to feel like Joan Cusack on Runaway Bride. (If you haven't seen it, you definitely should!) She talks to Julia Roberts about how hard it is "for us married women who have lost our mystery." That's where I am: completely and utterly unmysterious.
"O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his ways past finding out!" (Romans 11:33, KJV)
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (Isaiah 55:9, ESV)
"God chose to make known....the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." (Colossians 1:27, ESV)
I was especially struck by that last verse. The mystery of the gospel (that never loses its mystery!) is that Christ living in us gives us hope of glory. Not just glory in the eternity-in-heaven-someday sense of glory, although that is certainly part of it. But the meaningful part to me at this stage in life is that Christ in me gives me the hope of bringing glory to God.
Despite all the changes that have taken place in my life in the last year, this has remained constant: Christ is in me. If that is true- and it is!-I can bring glory to God, mysterious or no. I'm realizing now more than ever that it is not what I have to offer, but what he offers to me that makes my life count for something greater. I'm challenged to remember, even on my frumpiest days, that the God of all mysteries resides in me and gives me hope of something greater than sweat pants and pony tails. Not so I can get the credit, but so he is lifted up.
Now THAT gives me motivation to get dressed in the (mid)morning!
Blessings,
Megan
