Today’s post is by Catherine Kemeny Gambrell.   This piece on motherhood adds to a popular UP CLOSE segment for May.  Catherine is an anything-but-stay-at-home mom to the world’s two most beautiful, entertaining, and sleepless children! She currently lives in northern Utah with her seminary teacher husband of 8 years. Together they enjoy hiking, camping, backpacking, cycling, and basically every other outdoor activity. Alone, Catherine hypothetically enjoys reading, writing, dancing, cooking, and showering, though her children make sure she is never alone so she usually has a companion or two joining her in these endeavors. Catherine has a BS in Sociology from Brigham Young University, which she occasionally uses to stir up controversy among her friends and acquaintances… Catherine blogs at yourfireyoursoul.blogspot.com

As I think back to my first child’s infancy, it is funny to me how much I dwelt on sleep, or more appropriately, the lack of sleep. At the time, I was sure no baby could be as poor a sleeper as my son. At the time, I knew if I could just get some sleep life would be perfect. At the time, the sleep deprivation felt like the hardest thing in the world.

How I sometimes wish for those days back.

My son woke frequently to nurse at night for his first year and a half of life. But he went promptly, and deeply, back to sleep until the next time he woke to nurse. I never had to rock him for hours at night. He never woke up, suddenly aware and angry that I had placed him in his crib, just as I settled back to sleep. After his newborn days, I never had to change diapers in the middle of the night. He slept in until at least 10:00 every morning, and he took predictable long naps two times a day. He fell asleep nursing every night without a fight.

I miss the days when I could sleep in. I miss the days when I could take a nap to catch up on lost sleep. I miss the days when I had only had one child to take care of.

I wish I could have appreciated how much simpler life was with only one child.

Of course, at the time, it didn’t feel like life was simple. It felt like more than I could handle. Just like even though I am sure having only two children is infinitely easier than having more, right now it feels like more than I can handle.

As with all things in life, just because it could get worse in the future doesn’t make it any easier to deal with NOW.

One of my biggest pet peeves in life is what I call “one-uppers.” People who just have to “one-up” all your trials (or successes). They’re the ones who say to you, “You think you have it hard, with one kid who doesn’t sleep, and a husband who is in school? Just you wait. Just you wait until you have 4 (or 6. Or 14.)kids, and your husband is the bishop in your ward, and your left leg falls off, and your house burns down, and…” blah blahblah. Understandably, there are people in the world whose lives are a whole lot harder than mine. But that doesn’t negate the fact that my life does sometimes overwhelm me, stress me out, make me feel inadequate, or lonely, or desperate.

When my son wasn’t sleeping well, it DID feel like the end of my world. Even though, as I now know, it could have been a lot worse.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the past few weeks, as my daughter’s poor sleeping habits have now far surpassed my son’s. I found myself telling my husband recently that I wished our daughter could be as good a sleeper as our son was. Did I ever think those words would have come out of my mouth, about 2-3 years ago, when I was in the midst of all my troubles with our son not sleeping? Never in a million years.

My perspective has totally changed.

Or is it just that I have grown as a mother, and am continuing to grow, line upon line, precept on precept? I think Heavenly Father is wise. He wants us to succeed. He pushes us to (what we feel is) our absolute limit, and then as we learn and grow and our limit changes, he pushes us to our new absolute limit, over and over again, until we are handling things far beyond what we ever imagined we would be able to.

Motherhood is my“refiner’s fire.”My children challenge me in ways I never could have foreseen. It may seem trivial to some, but there are times, in my constant haze of sleeplessness, when it feels like I just can’t handle any more. I can’t stay awake another minute with a baby who refuses to sleep for the fourth straight hour of the night. I can’t deal with another preschooler tantrum about what we eat for breakfast. I can’t tell my 3-year-old not to squeeze his sister one more time. I must constantly keep my anger in check with my children, my greatest joys, my greatest trials. As I am met with the challenges of motherhood (which, I have to be honest, have taken me by surprise), I am presented with great opportunities for growth.

I just hope I have the strength (and energy) to allow this fire to refine me, and to allow “the insignificant and the unimportant in [my life to] melt away like dross and make [my] faith bright, intact, and strong” (James E. Faust, “The Refiner’s Fire,” Ensign, May 1979, 53).

 What challenges in your life have served as “refiner’s fires?” Are there any trials in your life that seem easier in retrospect? Do you think this is because your perspective has changed, or do you feel you are now just better equipped (through experience) to handle those challenges?What are the challenges of motherhood that have most surprised you? Do you have any “one-uppers” in your life?

Related posts:

  1. Because this is what I’m really thinking about this morning:
  2. Open Eyes, Open Heart
  3. Perfect for Mother’s Day: The Mother in Me


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