Good, better, best — "Yes!"

When you have to say no to good, so you can open yourself up to the best

I tried to ignore the way my heart pounded as I clicked into her Zoom room.

I was about to resign from a contract position I loved for a boss that I admired.

With a team of impressive women who I got to help lead.

Doing work that I enjoyed, that got concrete results for interesting clients, who appreciated what I did for them.

Not to mention a consistent paycheck that landed in my account every month.

For months, my head was spinning with the weight of it.

I did not want to say goodbye and watch the whole organization march forward without me.

Did not want to disappoint my boss or heap the burden on her of having to hire and train someone new.

I also didn’t want to (or feel like I could) walk away from the income. Not only because of the money but also the value I imagined it bestowed on me as a human.

But I’d spent the day before hunkered down in a quiet coffee shop, chronicling everything going wrong in my life.

And the truth was, I wasn’t taking good care of myself.

I was overwhelmed, struggling to breathe.

Even my messy desk, piled with scraps of paper, receipts, broken pieces that would never be fixed, and products waiting to be returned, wasn’t as cluttered as my brain.

I was always on high alert, scanning my list of tasks that seemed to multiply with each anxious glance.

Yet I was terrified to release any of my to-dos.

I didn’t have enough energy to make it through the day without a nap, and still required 9 or 10 hours of sleep at night.

As my pen scratched across the page, I poured it all out into my journal. The one with Boston Terriers wearing sunglasses on the cover.

“I’m burned out with a capital ‘B.’”

“I’m tired of being tired.”

“Nothing ever seems to change.”

“I don’t even know how to connect with my kids.”

“I’m not cut out for this life.”

“I just want to be left alone.”

“I don’t know how to be happy and content anymore.”

I felt trapped and panicked in the Groundhog Day of raising often demanding, angry, broken children with struggles of their own.

And I felt like a failure for not being able to fix it for them as easily as I could scoop them up and mend a scraped knee with a Band-Aid.

And then guilty for being impatient with them or wanting to run away from them and their pain.

I knew I couldn’t keep living that way.

Like I wanted to quit everything and crawl into a hole and sleep.

But work, if truth be told, was my escape.

I persuaded myself that I worked to give the kids their gluten-free pretzels and dairy-free cheese shreds, their private schools that supported their special needs, their therapy, and supplements.

But work also makes me feel competent.

I’m good at what I do.

I sit down with my clients who show up on time, eager to meet with me after waiting weeks or months to get on my schedule.

I dole out advice that they actually follow.

Then they generate positive, measurable results: they pay off their debt, their businesses bring in more money, they attract more search traffic, they sell more products.

They come back and thank me for helping them and compliment my work.

Oh, and they pay me for my efforts, too.

I feel good; they feel good.

Everyone is happy.

Can you see how this is the opposite of parenting?!

Because here’s the hard reality of mothering: You can dedicate everything you have to your maternal efforts (listening to their stories, teaching them Bible verses, redirecting them toward more kindness, preparing healthy meals, and providing all the physical, mental, emotional, financial, and spiritual support they need), and all that effort may or may not yield the fruit you’re hoping for.

They might still get mad at me for making them unload the dishwasher or making them the broccoli frittata they loathe for dinner and scream right in my face that I am the very worst mother in the world.

They might still get in trouble at school for being unkind to their fellow students and rude to their teachers.

They might alternate shrieking and weeping while tears and snot run down their red faces for 582 hours at a time.

Or dump out their entire bin of toys all over the floor and refuse to clean them up.

Lose their school supplies.

Forget to turn in their homework.

And leave their lunches rotting in their backpacks over the weekend.

And if my experience proves true, they’ll probably continue to do all that and more.

It’s the most important work I’ll ever do, but the rewards are eternal — not immediate.

Which is why I felt so reluctant when I opened my eyes the morning after my coffee shop brain dump, and it was heavy on my mind that I should walk away from the position I loved so much.

By some miracle, the kids weren’t yet clamoring over us, and I snuggled up and unloaded everything I was thinking with my wiser, better half, the early light sneaking past the edges of our bedroom curtains.

He responded simply, “It sounds like you need to quit.” (Without saying, “I told you so,” which he had been, for months.)

And he was right.

I was right.

I knew that was exactly what I needed to do.

And a couple of hours later, I tapped out a message to my boss, asking her for a meeting, and hit send before I could lose my nerve. She was available to talk right away and wasn’t at all surprised to hear what I had to tell her.

While I did shed some tears afterward, in the days and weeks that followed, I felt like a literal weight had disappeared from my shoulders, and I could breathe again.

Sometimes as moms, we have to say no to the good, and instead choose the best “yes.”

To course-correct and pick the path that brings you closer to who God intended you to be by the end of it.

It’s never easy, but you do have the power to make needed changes for yourself and your family.

It might not look like leaving a job. Maybe it’s an attitude or an activity, a commitment, or a coping mechanism you need to let go.

It might not be one dramatic quit but instead a series of smaller changes over time.

Whatever your situation, I believe the Spirit is already prompting your heart about exactly what you need to change, quit, or leave behind.

Now all you need to do is take time to be still and listen. Pour it all out in your journal. Crunch some numbers. Then obey what you hear, not yet knowing how it will all work out.

In the end, I had to drop a few of the balls I had in the air in faith and wait and see where they’d land.

No, not everything is perfect, and I still feel overwhelmed at least part of every day.

But I now have the little bit of margin I needed to not always feel like the sky is falling when they need a costume for the school play or they wore a hole in their shoes or I have to fill out 40 pages of paperwork for a doctor’s appointment, or there’s a snow day, or one of them comes down with strep.

This one decision freed up the hours to consistently read my Bible, exercise, journal, write, plan, pray, knit, and breathe again — all so I can be more calm, connected, and present with my kids.

I’m finally starting to heal from the last few years.

To see the beauty in life again.

My desk and my mind are a lot less cluttered.

I’m going all in on my kids while working a more sustainable 10 hours a week for my own clients.

Most of all, I feel good that I’m showing up more as the mom I want to be.

To have a genuine smile on my face when they get out of school.

To kneel down and look into their sweet faces and ask them about their day (even if all I get is a shrug and a grunt).

To drive them to their appointments.

To take weekends off.

They’ve stopped saying, “Mommy why do you always have to work?”

In fact, this isn’t the first time that I’ve stepped back from my paid work for a season to focus on my calling as a mom. (The first was when my oldest baby was born and the second was when I was “COVID-schooling” our youngest for over a year.)

Each time, the numbers haven’t quite added up. With rampant inflation on food, gas, and healthcare, this time is no different.

But every time, God has provided abundantly and usually in unexpected ways far outside my own efforts.

And so far, no one has been deprived of their gluten-free pretzels.

While financial stewardship is essential, there’s much more that figures into these decisions than mere dollars and cents.

It would have been easy to assess the numbers alone and say, “We need the income, so I can’t quit.”

But it’s the bigger picture of your faith, family, and finances that all need to work together to bring you where you ultimately want to be.

I believe you can grow and find coherence in all three.

If you too are feeling overwhelmed, stretched too thin, and not prioritizing what’s really important to you, you are not alone.

If you want to find forward motion with our faith, family, and finances — without so much frenzy, let’s do this together.

I hope you’ll join me in this new chapter of GrowingSlower.