Cowgirls Don't Cry

Today on the way to preschool the song Cowgirls Don’t Cry came on the radio. Wade gets all excited when he hears two specific words in a song and makes a HUGE deal out of it. Those words are “Cowboy(girl)” or “Jesus”. If he hears either of them, he about comes out of his seat to tell me. Which is quite often, because we listen to country music and KLOVE all the time… So when he heard the lyrics today he says “Hey mom! He said “cowgirl”! He said they don’t cry!” I kinda laughed and said “usually”. Then he pipes up with, “It’s kinda like you mom. Kinda like you don’t cry AND you’re a cowgirl!” which was really ironic because it was right about then that the tears started running down my face!

I try really hard to keep my stress and fear out of sight of my boys. I’m so glad to hear straight from the babe’s mouth that I’m doing a pretty good job of it! But then I got thinking and I asked myself a question. My boys might not see my fears and frustrations. They might not see the tears. So what ARE they seeing? Not a question I wanted to answer honestly to myself. They’re not seeing joy and they’re not seeing faith, that much I know for sure. They’re seeing robotic actions of an overwhelmed mother instead of love and patience.

I‘ve finally come to realize that every time I start struggling with something it circles right around to not having enough faith. Me being the hardheaded person that I am keeps going back to the way I’ve always handled things and trying to fix things on my own instead of giving it up to God like I know I need to. Somehow I manage to be surprised every time it doesn’t work….imagine that. And yet I keep doing it.

If nothing else, at least I’m tenacious…

I need to learn how to dig deeper into my newly formed faith when I’m at my wits end. It’s hard though. REALLY hard. You would think that something so obvious and so promising would come so easy, like falling in love with a new pair of Luccese boots. But I’ve always been a stubborn creature of habit, and faith isn’t an exception. It’s been 20-something years of doing things my way and it’s not easy to buck this wagon out of it’s ruts. But that’s exactly what it is. Ruts of tears and frustration and pain that I get stuck in over and over. It’s not a happy place. It’s muddy down here, and there’s a lot of manure. (Wading through horse crap, you‘d think I‘d be used to it! Haha!) And I hit walls a lot. And I don’t mean just bump into them, I mean crash head on, tumbling head over heels and slam through a brick wall.

Apparently, I’m also enthusiastic with my tenacity.

The difference now is, I have babies to teach. They are learning their faith from me. The problem is, I don’t like to be stretched, challenged or pushed. Not in ways that makes me uncomfortable anyways and faith isn’t always comfortable. It’s not always easy and sometimes it actually hurts! It’s something crucial that I do for myself though, for my marriage and for my kids.

The enthusiastic tenacity needs to be redirected. Kind of like a toddler…

It’s so hard for me to stop the tears and keep the fears at bay. When I start to wig out about something, I try hard to tell myself to stop an pray but all I really want to do is throw something and scream real loud. Somehow I need to figure out how to have a heart so full of faith that there’s no room for the fears. That way I wont have to worry about the crazy mother my boys are seeing because if there’s no room for the fear then there's no cause for the tears and all that’s left is love! And, as Wade likes to believe, cowgirls don't cry anyways!