I am sure everyone of us has felt that this must be the case, at least a few times in our lives. When things go horribly awry and bad thing after bad thing happens to us, we can tend to wonder whether the “Big Guy” might have it out for us. If we are quite religious, we might come to believe that God is a stern taskmaster who is watching our every move and is probably a little ticked at us for not keeping up appearances. (Rubbish, btw.) If we have been particularly rotten, we may naturally assume that no celestial Omnipresence would ever condone our behavior, therefore, God is likely mad at us, just like everybody else. I have spent the better part of my adult life mucking around with all three of those options. I have worked hard in the last two decades to get free from ridiculous, wayyyyy-off concepts of God and His feelings towards me. I have struggled to get a firm grasp on the truth about what God is like. I weed out the yuck and work hard to turn off the old tapes in my mind. Baby steps. I’m doing the work. Then one day all of my hard work went to pot when one of my very own children announced to me, “Mama, God is mad at you.”
My biggest weakness as a young mother was the losing of my temper. No one was more shocked to discover this humiliating aberration in me…than me. I was a Child Development/Music major and had worked with children for many years before I had my own. I had been super judgey towards women I had witnessed losing it in Wal-mart or the doctor’s office waiting room. On one occasion at the beach when I was 17, I watched a mom speaking in a highly irritated and degrading tone of voice to her child for a good solid hour. I was so enraged that I walked straight up to her and said, “If you keep talking to your kid like that, he’s going to HATE YOUR GUTS by the time he is my age” and marched off. Woahhhh – judgey Mc Judgerson! Nice one, Michelle. I could not WAIT to have kids of my own and I just knew I was going to be the best, most awesome, most creative, most patient mom in all of history. So, the fact that I began to struggle with throwing mommy-sized fits of rage came as a huge, shameful shock to me. It didn’t take long. By the time Russell was 11 months old, I had eaten all of my previous judgey words about moms who lose their temper because I was losing mine. I did not have the tools to deal with the feelings and day to day pressure that I felt, as a new mother. I found myself doing ridiculous things like yelling, slamming doors and throwing stuff. I was disgusted to see this display of weakness in myself and tried to minimize it in my mind as a string of “stressed-out-one-offs”.
In the years to come, adding three more kids to the mix only exacerbated my issue. I had still not fully learned how to process my emotions in a healthy way and struggled to rule over my own behavior. The compounded daily pressure to be kind, responsible, wise and loving towards five whole other people for 24 hours of every day was difficult for me. The ever-shrinking time for self-care and processing made me even more vulnerable to my own wretched coping mechanism. Even though the episodes became less frequent, I continued to indulge myself from time to time with a good old fashioned hissy fit. Rehashing them in my mind still makes me want to throw up. My two oldest children were well used to my “episodes” and if they sensed me ramping up they would pander to try to calm me down. They would be quiet and keep a low profile until hurricane Michelle passed over. Even as I write this, my heart aches for what my fit-throwing did to them. I am grateful for their forgiveness and grateful to God for freedom from this cycle for both them and me. The rebuke that finally turned the tides came from none other than child #3.
4 year old Elliott hadn’t seen this side of me yet and he was unprepared for what he witnessed one fine summer day at dinner time. He was an insanely picky eater. It was all about texture for him and his list of unacceptable textures was exhaustive. If a food item set off his alarms, he would literally gag and spit it out on his plate. Every meal time was a tense waiting game for me to see whether or not the food would pass his inspection. He was an impossible person to feed and I was letting it make me crazy. On this particular occasion, he gagged and spat up his first taste of the perfectly wonderful dinner I had prepared and it was just the final straw for me. I was in the kitchen and I started yelling at him and stomping around and with great flourish, I even threw a wooden spoon across the kitchen. (So matuuuuuuure, I know.) Elliott was taken sharply aback by “angry mom”. He started crying and angrily pushed himself away from the table. He marched straight out the front door and slammed it with the biggest slam a four year old could deliver. I had met my match. This kid was not intimidated by me and he was not giving me the power over him that my fit-throwing usually ensured. He paced back and forth on the deck, crying big angry tears and was clearly pissed off that I had yelled and thrown stuff. Strangely enough, him reacting to me in a “you have crossed my boundary lines, Mama” kind of way jerked me right back to reality. It was like throwing a bucket of cold water in my face. I immediately un-hurricaned, came to my Mama senses and went to apologize to him. I told him I was so sorry and asked him to please forgive me. He had his favorite two fingers in his mouth and a trail of tears on his perfect cheeks. He scowled at me and then walked right past me to his room.
Yikes. This was a different game now. This kid would not be intimidated by me and wasn’t so sure he wanted to get close to me again, if I was capable of such an insane outburst. Fair enough, I thought. I just gave him his space and finished up dinner with the other kids. Later that night, we were headed out somewhere and I had to buckle Elliott into his carseat. It was the closest he had let me get to him since he had stomped past me on the deck. As I was buckling him in, he pulled his fingers out of his mouth, and said, “God is mad at you, Mama!” I was stunned that this four year old of mine had processed enough of what had happened to decide what God must think of me and my behavior. I looked him in his Precious Moments eyes and said, “I am so sorry for what I did. I let myself get way too angry and it’s not okay for mamas to yell and throw things. And you’re right, God doesn’t like what I did. I have asked Him to forgive me and I sure hope you will too. I love you Elliott and I am so sorry.” He told me he forgave me and I smothered him up with kisses.
I lay awake in bed that night realizing that I had been called to account by my own child. That behavior was a deal breaker for him and he had made his boundaries clear. Even though I knew in my heart that God wasn’t mad at me, the words in the Bible about how horrible it is to do damage of any kind to a child were rolling around in my mind. It was a wake up call and a pattern breaker. I am thankful that God gave me a child who is designed for justice and who felt like he could tell me the truth. I pursued better stress-handling skills and took ownership of my ability to control myself. I have not walked this out perfectly and have needed much mercy and forgiveness. That one thing I thought I would never do, I have done, just like Paul. Thank goodness, God is not mad at me. He forgives me and helps me. He helps me uncover the reasons why my fuse gets short and enables me to live healthy and process stress and emotions with increasing maturity.
Mamas, if you are like me and have found yourself losing it on the little people that you would gladly trade your life for, you are not alone. Mothering is the most intense, demanding and rewarding occupation there is. It is 24 hours a day. The job requirements are physical labor, sleep disturbance, hygiene, chef and housekeeping duties, education, problem solving skills, being fun skills… oh yeah and patience, kindness, wisdom, love and self-control. You need help knowing how to care for yourself in a high stress environment like that. You need mercy.
To the lady on the beach, I am just so sorry. I had no idea of your story or even the pressures you felt every single day. If I saw you today, in your angsty state, I would get you a coke and ask you how your day was going. I’m so sorry for judging you. God is not mad at me and He’s not mad at you. He says He places high value on children and you and I are also…children.
