The Story of "The Thirsty Mom"

Do you ever find yourself thirsty for more? If you answer "No" then you may as well stop reading now. If your answer is "No" then this blog is not for you. If your answer is "Yes" however, then I may have some great insights for you or at the very least a shoulder to lean on.....someone to feel your pain.



I'm a mom to three wonderful children. These children can ignite crazy mad love within the very core of my soul. They also ignite a fire that can drive me insane or at the very least into the back corner of a dark closet. I always wanted to be a mom. I can remember at 12 years of age overhearing a friend of my moms telling her she should watch me closely as a teenager because I loved children so much I may try to have one early. At 17 I met the love of my life......he was eleven years my senior and everything I wanted in a man. Scratch that.....he was handsome and nice and that's about all I knew at that time. However, I was in love nonetheless. I wanted to spend every waking moment in his arms and couldn't wait to get my senior year over with so that I could get married and live happily ever after. That is what all 17 year old girls want right? Well, that's what I thought. A true south Louisiana girl, I grew up wanting to be like my grandma and mom. College? Who needs college when you have this older man who makes lots of money and wants to take care of you? Well, that's the way I remember it anyway. Lots of money turned into very little to a 19 year old newlywed with these things called bills that she'd only heard her parents speak of in hushed tones.

After a 10 year whirlwind of a marriage, 3 miscarriages, 3 children and the death of my husbands mother I surely found myself wanting more. We were stuck. Caught in the web of the everyday monotony that so many couples find themselves in today. We fought over the silliest of things and the crazy wild love I'd felt at 19 soon turned into bitterness. I was doing the "stay at home mom" thing which mostly included "staying at walmart or the mall" and neglecting the things that needed to be done during the day before kids get home from school. He was working for himself trying to make a business survive in an economy that was slowly rolling downhill. On a night I like to call "as bad as it gets" we had a decision to make. Get in or Get out. We no longer wanted to fight about who forgot to close the bag of chips or who was washing the dishes, or who invested more time in the kids......we were done fighting. I was exhausted.

After "as bad as it gets" calmed down....my home was very quiet. I took a long hot bath, still crying and stepped out to face myself in the bathroom mirror. After wiping away the steam I took a long hard look into that mirror. As crazy as this may sound, that bathroom mirror changed my life. It was a typical steamy Louisiana night in early July and as I gazed into that mirror at the child looking back at this woman, I asked myself one simple question.

"If it never gets any better than it is right now.....is this how you want to feel in 20 years?"

You see, its easy to say things are bad but they will get better. Its easy to say to yourself, we are just caught up in life, bills, money problems, family issues or whatever else it is you are battling....its easy to say "Next year will be better", "Next year we will have more money....more time....happier children....etc..." But what if next year its not better? Can you live with that? I couldn't. Let me just say, I wouldn't.

After that fateful night and my fateful question I then began to ponder my life as I knew it. What had I done that landed me where I was? I had to go back to the start....back to my senior year and this man I believed God had surely placed in my life. Did I love him? Yes. Did I love myself? I presumed to love the version of myself I'd created for the world to see, sure.....But "Who was I anyway?" A mom. A wife. A friend. These were all I could come up with but there was one problem. These are the things I was to everyone else. Who was I to ME? And more so, who was I to God? This began my quest to discover the meaning of my life, not the meaning of life..but the meaning of MY life.

Over the last three years something phenomenal has happened. I'd like to call it a miracle. I have started to discover myself in ways that I only dreamed possible. The confidence I faked for so long is now genuine and real. The unhappy marriage is now a happy one. The unorganized chaotic home is now on its way to becoming a place that a child would want to grow up in. And the answer that I was looking for all along was literally right in front of me the whole time. The answer stared me in the face every morning when I brushed my teeth, and at night when I stepped out of the shower......yep, every single time I peered into that bathroom mirror the answer was staring back at me. Peaking into the depths of my being and begging the question.....Are you happy? Truly happy? The answer my friends was ME.



When I thought of all the things that had gotten me to this place in my life, something occurred to me. If I wanted an opposite life, attitude, husband, children.......an opposite me......then I had to do the OPPOSITE of everything I'd done that landed me here. So I started, slowly at first, to undo all that I had done. Instead of complaining about who was going to wash the dishes, I did them myself. Instead of begging him to help me with bathing our children.....I did it myself. Instead of asking him repeatedly why he had to go to home depot after work instead of coming home, I said "Alright darlin', see ya soon". Instead of going to bed and scooting as far as I could to the other side because I was determined not to give myself to a man who I felt wasn't giving himself to me, I drew near to the warmth of his body. And do you know something? It felt fantastic.....I had been punishing myself for so long. So instead of doing what society had taught me to do, instead of trying to "teach my man a lesson." I did the opposite. Do you know why? Because I realized something.....all those women on the talk shows, and all those women in my life, the ones who said "Girl, don't be a doormat! You gotta whip that man into shape." Those women were unhappy, and bitter. Logic told me that I didn't want to be one of those women.

So you are thinking to yourselves now.....I know I can almost hear you....you are thinking to yourself, "I am not going to just do it all and allow him to do nothing. So if that's what you are suggesting, forget it." I want to be very clear about this. A funny thing happened when I started to change.....and therein lies the miracle. He changed. Yes girls, you heard me right.
He C-H-A-N-G-E-D. He was so very humbled by my attitude and actions, that he wanted to love me with his own actions. He started asking if I needed help with more things in the evenings. I noticed that I didn't need to ask so often anymore, I found he just began doing tasks that needed doing. You see, Love is not just a feeling, its an ACTION. You show it more than you say it. What do your actions say? Now I'm not saying this works in every case but I am saying this...."What have you got to lose?"

A dear friend taught me this, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different reaction. Do you feel insane at times? Are you thirsty for more?