Why Isn’t It Easier? Reflections on Motherhood, Writing and Faith

Sometimes I just don’t want to write. Because the words won’t come and I’m fighting so hard just to keep my head above water. Other days it’s like turning on the tap and I can’t stop even if I want to. (Well actually, I can and I often do but the important part is that I don’t really want to).

But then motherhood isn’t easy and neither is faith. Both things I am also meant to do and I often feel like they are all tied together in some way. That my mothering shapes my faith in the deep and hard ways which influences my writing. At times it takes me putting the words on the page to really figure out what I think or how I feel about something. Just the act of letting my thoughts come out my fingers produces a kind of clarity that comes in no other way.

Parenting bring clarity too, but usually of a different kind. It forces me to address the basest parts of myself. The selfish human that I thought I’d put down years ago, but something about motherhood makes it rear its ugly head again.

That sounds like an easy thing. But it isn’t. It’s a daily wrestling match of handing things over in faith and taking them back out of fear. It may sound like a platitude but it is far from it. Sometimes I’m just hanging on by my fingernails and wondering where God is, but he hasn’t failed me yet and the alternative to a life of faith is, for me, no life at all.

So again, I face the empty page and let my simple ramblings pour out, even as much of it slips through my mental fingers and I know that all that I say is flawed and yet meaningful in its imperfection.

Whatever you have: the stories, the music, the art, the food, anything that makes the world more beautiful, let it out. Don’t keep it to yourself. Just the act of sharing may help you find the clarity you seek.