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Show Notes:

Welcome to the last episode of May is for Mamas! Today, I’m going to be brief and hopefully encouraging. And I don't say this lightly—I believe the secret to getting the most out of motherhood, and life in general, is to simply lean in to your season.

For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below.

Lean into your season.

Easier said than done, especially in motherhood and especially in hard seasons of motherhood. But you know, this podcast is not here to make you comfortable or always tell you what you want to hear. It is a call for you to dig deeper, to reach higher. I want to encourage you to be the Buffalo, to do the hard things, because you were made for hard things. I was made for hard things. We can do it now.

I've never done or experienced anything as hard as being a mom ever in my whole life. And I'm just in the very beginning of this whole motherhood journey. I have been stretched beyond my capacity physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And it's something you don't understand until you walk through it yourself, but it's a gift. Isn't it? Today I just, I want us to stop and think about what season are we in? What season are you in as a mom? What season of life are your kids in?

And today, I just want to remind you of two things:

First, that it is a season. It's going to come to an end and,

Second, for you to lean into it.

So let's talk about some different seasons of motherhood. Now. I said, it's a season, it’s going to come to an end—you're you're always going to be a mom, obviously. Motherhood isn't going to come to an end for you. But the season of life that you're in will change and there will be a new season around the corner.

So let's just kind of back up and think about motherhood and all of the seasons. First, there's pregnancy. I'm in the season right now, the beginnings of laying down your life and your body growing with someone else in mind the entire time.

Then, it's trial by fire. As soon as you cross that threshold from pregnancy to labor to birth, you’re immediately thrown into doing something you never thought you'd be able to do. To survive without sleep, to breastfeed around the clock, to literally lay down your body, your time, your life, any dreams that you have just for a season, just trying to teach them to be a little person—to sleep, to eat, to not be attached to you 24/7. And then before you know it, they start to crawl to walk to run.

Then there are the toddler years, the preschool years, the scraped knees, the clinging to mama, the making of little friends and experiencing life outside of home, just for a little bit here and there, leaving them at the nursery at church or dropping them off at their first day of preschool and all the while you miss them so much, but you're trying to kind of find yourself again. And there's so much goldfish and applesauce, and you're navigating unbelievable growth, and learning, and bursts of language and communication, and seeing their eyes light up and their little personalities just blossom. I mean, there's those belly laughs and the playful times that you have with them that are just so sweet, the long moments where they just fall asleep on your shoulder and you wish that it would never end.

Then there's school. Kindergarten, learning to read, first grade, second grade, elementary school, homework, friendships growing, grasping new concepts, playing—so much playing, imagination, adventures. Then they hit middle school and they're really learning what they like and what they don't like, and there's puberty conversations about more serious topics. Talk about sex, talk about the opposite sex, there's sports, games, dance, music lessons, tons of growth, teaching them about the love of God, how to listen to God, how to know Him.

And before you know what they're in high school. High school! Teenage years dating, staying up late to study at night, figuring out boundaries for themselves, heartaches and heartbreaks and youth group and sports games and musicals and getting good grades and getting bad grades and dating and discovering who they are, how to communicate, how to manage really big emotions and what really matters in life.

Then their next step, they graduate high school and they're off to college or working, maybe staying at home for a little while longer, maybe moving far away. They're making their own life decisions. They're moving from being under your care. They're deciding on their life, their friendships shape who they are, who they learned from the voices they are welcoming into their lives shape their beliefs. Their dating relationships are moving to marriage material conversations. Then, hopefully there's a fulfilling career, marriage, them starting their own family. And the hope is—my hope is—is that I will have raised God-fearing spirit filled productive members of society who know how to communicate well, who are sure of themselves, and they're so sure of who God is and His love that they are pulled. They love life. They're unafraid to step into their gifts, how God has uniquely made them.

And then they step into a season of parenthood themselves. That's crazy to think about. And I step into a season of motherhood that's more hands-off, more mentor and friend, more support and advice as I step into being a grandmother and can hopefully lead my kids along with my husband through these hard and beautiful seasons of parenthood all over again.

I don't know about you, but this is hard for me to even imagine. Like, it's hard for me to imagine being past the season that I am in. It is hard to think of myself as a grandmother. As I sit here talking to you very pregnant with my fourth baby. My oldest right now is in kindergarten and the other two are in preschool. And most days I'm still covered in goldfish and applesauce and we're watching Paw Patrol all the time. So, I just want you to hear me say this episode is for me just as much as it is for you, because sometimes it's hard to wrap our heads around the fact that we aren't going to be in the season forever.

So I'm going to encourage us, you and me, to remember: one, it's a season and, two, lean into it

First, Remember it's season. The days are long, the years are short. We've heard it before, but the season you were in, no matter how hard it is. It’s fleeting. Psalm 39 four says, show me, Lord, my life's end. And the number of my days, let me know how fleeting my life is.

Okay. A little bit of real talk. The other day I told my husband I was going to lose my mind, and I wanted to stab myself in the eyeball with a fork because of how our children were behaving and making me go mad. Legit, I felt like I was going crazy. They were pushing all my buttons. I yelled way more than I wanted to that day, and I just needed out. And those days are going to happen and that's okay. But the thing that helps me on those hard days is to remember: it's a season. It's not going to last forever. But also, when the days are good and sweet and you get extra snuggles and your two year old boy randomly comes up to you and says, I love you mama and gives you a big bear hug. And your five-year-old says, mama loved dinner tonight, which I rarely hear. Or your three-year-old just snuggles you on the couch a little while longer while you drink your coffee. I want you to remember as I need to, it's a season. We need to soak it in and enjoy it for what it is.

So secondly, lean into it, lean into the season, whatever it is, if you're navigating some serious teenage rebellion or really nasty hard conversations or toddler tantrums, or maybe you were like me, and you felt like you were going mad just yesterday or this morning, or maybe you're super sleep deprived. It's so hard to say this, but we have to lean into those hard things because it's our tendency, my tendency, to shy away from them, to run from them, to escape and no doubt we need, we need our moments of escape. We need our breaks. Those things are good and healthy, but I'm saying overall, as a season, let's be present and show up as best as we can. I'm here to remind you today, God has equipped you to be their mom. He's given you everything you need. He has given you His authority.

Ephesians 2 says, “Because of His great love for us. God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It's by grace we've been saved. It's by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus."

He has raised you up and seated you with Christ. Jesus knows how to best parent your kid. He knows how to guide you for every single season that you're in. He knows what's best for you. He knows what's best for your kids. When the seasons are really sweet and really good when you're on that family vacation or camping trip. When you see your kids score a goal or perform a piano piece at a recital or make a good grade after steadying lean in, lean into it, enjoy every moment.

Or in those stretched moments when you feel like you cannot go on physically, you've been up three times in the middle of the night, comforting a child who's throwing up or you're doling out the Tylenol again, to get her fever down, when you're disciplining and you've lost your mind yelling at your child, and when you need to get on your knees to apologize and point your little one back to Jesus, because mommy's imperfect and needs Jesus too—lean in.

Lean into it, lean into all of it, because this is the gift of motherhood, all of the good days, and the hard days. These relationships, these little precious relationships in lives, they're going to be with us for life. This is it. This is your life and your legacy, and I just want to remind you your life and your legacy—it’s right in front of you. Lean into the season, for it won't be here forever.

To close the episode, I just want to point you back to Episode 047, one of my all time, favorite episodes in this podcast, where I had the privilege of talking with Dr. Richard Blackaby about his book called Seasons of God and how God created seasons. Yes, the four seasons that we live in and experience in our climate and weather, but it's more than that. It's that those seasons are reflected in life and how in his book, Seasons of God, it talks about this and how we can embrace spring and summer and winter and fall in every season of life. It's one of my favorite books. One of my favorite conversations, go give that a listen if you haven't yet. And just so you know, his book is already in my Work and Play Cornerstore, but if you haven't gotten a copy head to my Amazon affiliate page, nancyray.com/cornerstore so you can buy it. Because it really is such a beautiful way to just look at life and embrace every single season of it.