The false binary

Because what's going on in your body DOES matter

The first Mother’s Day I celebrated was in 2009, a few short months after my wedding. I had only just found out that I was pregnant, and how we told my husband’s family was by showing them the Mother’s Day bouquet that Aaron had bought me. And once that December rolled around (Cedar came four weeks early), I very concretely became a mama, a dream I’d had for as long as I could remember.

While in some ways, that day in December can seem like yesterday, it was actually sixteen and a half years ago, a reality underscored by seeing that tiny baby now tower over me and start to make excited plans for his life on his own. (Something that I’m also so excited about for him; it’s incredible to watch your children come into their own!) I recently turned forty, and have seven children, and have been a mother for over a decade and half, and yet often I feel so inexperienced in mothering. Each child is their own brand-new person, and unlike my blissful assurances pre-kids, you can’t mother them all the same way. I’m completely convinced that, no matter how many children you have, you will continue to be pushed into areas where you have no idea what to do.

But even though I’m still regularly stumped by parenting situations, and desperately need the Holy Spirit’s guidance, there are some areas where experience has taught me a thing or two. And one of the main areas is how I interact with myself as a mother. Let me explain…

I entered motherhood full of the deep-seated idealism borne from years of reading, babysitting, nannying/mother’s helper-ing, and just plain having a lot of opinions about life. Similar to the scenario I shared in the beginning of my post on divorce, with relatively low life experience and no actual experience in parenting, I was full of “so much surety, so many nicely-buttoned-up ideas, so much confidence that [I] definitely have this subject figured out.”

While many of my actual parenting ideas quickly got turned on their heads (having neurodivergent children causes that to happen faster than normal!), my firm beliefs about myself as a mother lasted much longer. I read so many evangelical Christian parenting books, desperate to do this “right”, and almost every single one told me the same thing: as a mother, I needed to “empty” myself for my children on the daily. Philippians 2:17, which says: “Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all”, was quoted (out of context) so many times, as some kind of justification for this idea of motherhood completely obliterating your needs as a person.

I still remember the first time I read the book Introverted Mom: Your Guide to More Calm, Less Guilt, and Quiet Joy by Jamie C. Martin. I had five kids under ten, was in the midst of a very painful and tumultuous time in our marriage, and we had no local support. I was stretched to my absolute limit, but thought that, as a good Christian mom, I just had to keep giving and giving and giving, with no thought to how it was affecting me. As an introvert, the people-ing aspect of mothering was particularly draining for me, but I tried to ignore the effect it had on me, thinking I was failing as a mom if that was the case.

Introverted Mom was the first mothering book I’d read that recognized that I was also a complete person along with being a mama. I can still love my children and oftentimes put their needs ahead of my own, while at the the same time recognizing my limitations as a human being and, shocker! sometimes put my needs first.

That was the first time I recognized the false binaries that we so often throw around in parenting (and many other areas), in order to come across as more dedicated. In the last several years, I’ve become aware of it so much more in Evangelicalism, where extreme-ness in belief and practice is consistently viewed as more holy and “sold out for God”. When I started looking into Anglicanism more and read the life-changing book, The Anglican Way by Thomas McKenzie, I was profoundly struck by the Anglican focus on following the via media (Latin for “middle way”), a balanced path that purposely avoids extremes. (What if that “narrow way” referenced in Matthew 7:13-14 is the via media? Because honestly, as someone who has been there many times over, it’s way easier to just go to the extreme in something than search out a balanced way of love. Possibly musings for another post someday…)

To make my wording clear, these false binaries show up any time we tell ourselves and others that in order to pursue or follow some path or idea, then we have to completely reject another path. There are obviously many true binaries in life, like the fact that if you truly are gluten-intolerant and don’t want to be miserable for three days, you can’t have wheat pizza crust, no matter how incredible it is or how badly you want it (ask me how I know). But many times we’ll assign binaries (either/or) where they’re not true, like my previous example of the idea that in order to be a good mom, I essentially needed to ignore my needs as a person.

Due to my personality, moving away from that idea and other false binaries, is an ongoing journey, but it’s one that has only yielded good long-term fruit. This more tempered path is one that I gently try to encourage young moms toward when they come to me for advice, as it’s so easy for our youthful idealism to get caught up in this idea of the more extreme, the better.

A couple of months ago, I saw something on Instagram directed at young moms, pushing a false binary that I know from experience can be so detrimental, and it made me so sad (and prompted the creation of a draft that turned into this post). It was a series of slides from a creator that a quick profile click-through showed a by-line that read “Biblical Family Culture + First Time Obedience”, and her bio shared “I will not validate your sin or soften what God has made clear. I will walk with you as we become obedient to Christ. Make obedience fruit not fight.” SO MUCH to unpack in just those few phrases, but I’m not here to a pick a fight with a particular person. My issue is the ideas that she is pushing on mamas trying so hard to do things “the right way”.

The post I first saw back in early April, was a series of eighteen slides and I’m not going to quote all of them here, but just some of the main points. They said things like, “Everyone keeps telling moms they’re ‘overstimulated’, but no one is asking if they’re undisciplined in their thinking”, “We’ve been given a language for everything: ‘I’m triggered’, ‘I’m overwhelmed’, ‘I’m dysregulated’. And some of that is real, but it’s not the whole story”, and “Not every reaction is a nervous system problem. Some of it is a wisdom problem.” Some of the phraseology seems to be making concessions for there being nervous system challenges to consider, but to me the tone makes it seem like that’s just an afterthought. The last few slides are where the false binary becomes very clear as we’re told: “Modern motherhood keeps telling you: ‘regulate your body’, but Scripture tells you: renew your mind” and “This is where becoming slow to anger actually begins, not with breathing techniques, but with disciplined thinking.”

Now, to clarify: I definitely think that the whole overstimulated “hot mess mama” focus can easily be taken too far into the realm of not taking responsibility for our actions. Balance is definitely needed there, but that’s not at all what I’m getting from these slides. Having been there, I can tell you that many overstimulated moms are truly hanging on by their last thread, oftentimes due to lack of support. Being told, in that state, that they need to renew their minds and discipline their thinking, while their brain is currently chemically dysregulated, is just defeating. As anyone who has tried to get through to a child who is worked up and wailing knows, we have to calm the mind and body in order for anything being said to get through to us.

Adults aren’t any different from children in this way, even though it might look different on the outside. So it’s not “regulate your body” or “renew your mind”, and “breathing techniques” or “disciplined thinking”. It’s about regulating your body so that you can actually take in Scripture and renew your mind. It’s about learning some basic breathing techniques (and then teaching them to your kids!) so that you can calm your body down to more effectively discipline your thinking.

Another thing that my journey into Anglicanism has shown me is how prevalent Gnosticism still is in many Evangelical circles. Among other things, one of the main beliefs of Gnosticism is that the physical/material world is inherently evil, and I see this playing out in Evangelicalism with the unspoken idea that what our bodies do and feel shouldn’t really affect us (purity culture, anyone?!) That if we just try hard enough with our minds, we can accomplish all the spiritual things we need to, regardless of what we’re currently experiencing within our God-given bodies.

And that’s what I see here, with this idea that it’s not important to do anything to help our minds and bodies in dealing with the demands of mothering, but that we just need to try harder in our thinking. As a mother who, her entire life, was so driven to make sure to do it “the right way” and who was always trying so hard, I can tell you that some of the best decisions I ever made as a mama were addressing very physical needs, in order to be in a better place to hear the Holy Spirit’s leading in my parenting. Finding some supplements that supported my mental health. Being intentional about taking time to sit down in brief quiet minutes to just breathe (!!) and rest my mind.

As much as our kindly Father God wants to renew our minds for our good, He recognizes that we are dust and our physical bodies need help to do that. We don’t have to prove anything to Him, dear heart, by pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps of our minds. We can do both the spiritual things that sound so holy, and the physical ones that are purely practical, and both honor Him.

“He will feed His flock like a shepherd; He will gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those who are with young.” (Isaiah 40:11; emphasis mine)