copy cat ....

When I was first starting out on this "mommyhood" journey I was all about hanging out with as many new mommies I could. I even started a Mom's Bible Study and had 4 friends who had just had babies too join. It was fun getting together talking about changing diapers, sleep deprivation and so on. Then a couple months in talk turned to weight gain, weight loss, whose child was hitting what milestone etc. It kind of became this let's see whose baby can drool better and be the first to cut teeth, sit up and walk...(which is funny because as all of us now "long time mommies" know.. when they learn to walk they can run away from you ... not good LOL) I began catching myself being nervous about bringing Skye to the group.. she was almost six months old and had not sit up on her own yet. What was WRONG with my child. Did I need to enroll her in some sort of support group to teach her proper posture and encourage her to be just like the other babies.. no NOT just like them.. BETTER.. It really was pathetic. Here is my poor almost 6 month old daughter just doing her "baby thing" and I was her paranoid mother.. already. ugh. So then the day Skye turned 6 months old.. literally the day..June 25.. I take a pregnancy test and BINGO it is positive. I was ecstatic! I remember thinking.. well I can not believe that I am going to have another baby... this is AWESOME! It got me thinking, well that was pretty much all there was to do once the puking for three months commenced.. I started thinking about how ridiculous I had been and that I just needed to chill out and let the milestones come as they should... naturally.
I think in my relationship with God I have been guilty of attempting to reach "milestones" at the same "pace" as other Christians. I think I have compared myself to others and found myself lacking miserably and have even been guilty of faking it to appear that I was just as "good" as them. All in the attempt to be what I was "supposed" to be.. or where I was "supposed" to be at in my walk. It has been one insight I gleaned through losing Caedmen, that life is too short to worry about what others do or think. It is what God thinks and what God calls you to do that is important.. more than that.. it IS what is supposed to be. There is a line between being influenced,encouraged and in being pressured or compete with. I think in women we do this more. We see another woman who has one or more kids than us, she seems dressed nicely all the time, her husband has a great job, her kids are all adorable and even her dog is well behaved. We put pressure on ourselves to BE that. To emulate THAT. But in the word we are told to imitate God... not people..

EPHESIANS 5: 1-2 (The Message)
“Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.”

I think the heart of this message is that our father LOVES us. Our Daddy... LOVED us extravagantly... the way we are.. the way he made us. He gave each of us a uniqueness and has called us for a purpose. If all we do is try to be like other people than we are robbing ourselves of the LOVE of the Father. We are replacing that LOVE with the longing for "acceptance" by a person. That will always let us down and make us feel not worth anything. But if we imitate GOD and LOVE like Him we are walking in what he has called us to do and we can let go of all the hangups and comparisons and be FREE in Christ.