Raising children while paralysed is tough but I'm determined to model good character for them & that doesn't require working legs

I’m going to be transparently honest. I find much of motherhood either very boring and uninspiring, or very overwhelming and unrelenting. The mum-life seems to perpetually swing back and forth between mundanity and insanity. Mums, am I alone?

To give that a personal context, before you judge me too harshly, I’m a paraplegic mum of a two-year-old and a five-year-old, and as I’m suffering multiple ongoing health conditions, I’ve spent almost three of those five years on bedrest for around 18-20 hours a day. I have a very hands-on husband, however he works full time for a church, and I’ve had no wider family around me over the last five years. To say it’s been tough at times is putting it mildly.

This isn’t a comparison game or supposed to make you feel bad if your struggles aren’t as visibly challenging as mine - pain is relative. It’s just to say that for all of us, motherhood often doesn’t turn out the way we’d expect, does it? (If it has for you, just know the rest of us hate you.)

The mum-life seems to perpetually swing back and forth between mundanity and insanity. 

As a result, I’ve had to rethink what it means to be a parent - one thing bedrest has afforded me is a lot of thinking time. When I discovered I was pregnant with my firstborn, I had to deal with the anxiety of how my disability would affect him and how it would shape his childhood. Would he be bullied? Would he grow up resentful or feel he’s missed out? Was it even possible to be both paralysed and a good mum?

The harsh reality was that I couldn’t avoid my shortcomings. Rather, I had to embrace them. I think that’s something we all realise as women soon or later - while my struggles will differ to yours, I don’t believe I’m alone. We all have maternal struggles. Whatever your obstacles or limitations, the external pressures on us as mums (and in fact simply as women) can be insurmountable at times. Pressures to have a career while raising children, to own, design and maintain the perfect home, to stay in shape, to cook the latest healthy, organic, gluten-free, vegan, Michelin-starred food for all the family - it’s never ending! And those pressures have only become heightened by the juggernaut of social media.

As such, this can lead us to conflate “being busy” with “being productive”, which then in turn can cause us to get our sense of identity and self-worth from our “productivity” as a mother. “Mum guilt” is an epidemic struggle! So what’s the answer? How do shrug off the pressures, but still raise well-rounded, content children?

We can conflate “being busy” with “being productive”, which then in turn can cause us to get our sense of identity and self-worth from our “productivity” as a mother.

I remember as a child my parents had the verse “Be still and know that I am God” framed on our wall. I love that verse – and it’s brought me great comfort over the years, but being “still” as a Mum? With lively kids? Well, it isn’t always possible!

However, studying theology as an adult I discovered that the word “still” doesn’t actually mean motionless here, but “surrender” - something I’ve had to be especially familiar with. Surrendering to my paralysis has been a long, tough journey, but I think that accepting it and giving my circumstances to God has helped me to learn patience and not pour pressure on myself to be someone I simply cannot be.

Surrendering to my paralysis has been a long, tough journey, but I think that accepting it and giving my circumstances to God has helped me to learn patience.

As someone who’s been very limited with what they can do and where they can go with their kids, I’ve learnt the greatest gift I can give them is not what I can do for them, but who I can be to them. I believe wholeheartedly that this is true for every Mum. I want to be someone they see modelling womanhood, demonstrating healthy marriage, displaying resilience, exemplifying integrity, being dependable, and living out authentic faith in close relationship with Jesus. All things that aren’t tied to my circumstances and none of them require working legs!

In fact, as cliché as it may be, motherhood has only further cemented my belief that “staying close to Jesus” really is the solution to everything. I cannot be the mum I want to be without surrendering all that I am to him.