has mothering six kids made me an expert? (full disclosure on my life right now.)

I'm not going to lie to you; I'm floundering a bit.  Maybe this feeling happens to me every December, and maybe it's just weather-related or busyness-related, but maybe, too, this is different.  I'm not sure.

Over the last six months, I've just felt like I'm in over my head.  Six kids is a lot of kids.  It definitely feels like more than five kids.  (I had assumed it wouldn't, really.)  I can't just glance down and immediately know whether I have them all, for one thing.  I have to do constant head-counts, but by the time I get to #6, someone has wandered off and I have to start all over again.

What's more, the older kids are getting older.  I don't know how to parent older kids!  I barely know how to parent little kids.  So I find myself second-guessing myself constantly - how do I handle this situation?  How do I discipline for that?  How do I encourage them to see this through a Biblical lens - and how often do I have the same conversation over and over and over before I can feel justified in getting exasperated?  Do kids in other families this size fight this often?  At what point will I ever get a handle on yelling at them?  And how can I possibly expect them to control their anger when I can't control mine?

And then, with Callista still being so young, there are the old questions that have to be answered afresh with every baby:  When do I move her to her own room?  Will she feel anxious when I do?  Am I emotionally ready?  When do I start inserting myself into her feeding schedule more forcefully and putting a kaibosh on the every-two-hours routine we have going through the middle of the night?  Is she getting enough to eat?  How would I know if she wasn't?  How hard to I feel like working to keep my milk supply up if it drops, and how will I know if it does?  Do I spend enough time with her?

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What makes all of this harder is the fact that I figured I'd have all the answers by now.  I assumed that, by the time I had six kids, I'd know my way around parenting well enough.  But lately I find myself with more questions than I've had since Atticus was born and I was brand new at this.  I find myself feeling just as overwhelmed and confused as I felt then.

There are a few major differences between then and now: first of all, when I first became a parent, everyone knew I was clueless.  No one was looking to me for answers.  Now, I sometimes feel like a fake: I have so few answers.  I don't have anything figured out.  How can I possibly dole out parenting advice when I'm really just learning as I go, and honestly feeling like many days' successes are more a result of crossed fingers than anything else?  The questions are there, and I do my best to field them if I can, but I feel like anything but an expert.

Second of all, I don't know personally know many women who have gone before me in this way.  When Atticus was first born, I literally knew hundreds of women who had had a baby before.  If I had humbled myself more at the time, I could have received wisdom and advice from countless moms who were farther along in the exact same journey I was in.  Now, I feel like the pool has shrunk. 

I'm grateful for the friends I have with older children than mine, and I'm trying my hardest to lean in and learn.  But I personally know only three moms with at least as many kids as I have, none of whom live closer than four hours away.  It seems like the actual number of kids someone has shouldn't matter to me, but it does.  First, in terms of solidarity.  They 'get' this life.  Second, in terms of logistics.  I have so many questions about how to deal with certain discipline issues or personality combinations, or how to juggle the weight of appointments and track curriculum loads and balance one-on-one time on this scale.  Just like in those early new-mom days, I wish I had someone to just walk me through all of this step-by-step, like a real, live YouTube tutorial on Parenting the Large Family.  But obviously, that can't exist, because anyone with that many kids doesn't have the time to parent me, too!

So I would say this season has been marked by a distinct feeling of incompetence, which is probably, if I'm being honest, my deepest fear and strongest aversion.  I just hate not knowing what I'm doing.  I am finding God's grace in this place, and the humility that he is teaching me is so good, and so necessary, and so freeing, but it isn't easy for me to simply take things one day at a time and hope it is all enough when it feels nowhere close to enough.

So, really, at the end of the day, I feel mostly confused, and I'm learning to feel grateful.  Confused by every single stinking thing parenting throws my way each day, and so grateful that I have a Heavenly Father with all the answers.  A Father who's juggling tons of kids.  A Father who promises me wisdom and rest when I come to him for these things.  A Father who guarantees I will never be enough - and that I was never meant to be.  He has everything in his good, capable, competent hands, and the only thing he wants me to know is humility.  It's so good to be a child in his household.