Living Lasts a Lifetime

by Jamie Erickson

I sat across from a young mom in a hipster coffee shop, the kind that serves deconstructed breakfast sandwiches in a bowl for around the price of the down payment of a tiny house. We went to the same church, and although we had known of each other for quite some time, this was our first real conversation.

If you were to chart our lives on a Venn diagram, there would be a surprisingly large amount of overlap. Like me, she was a writer. She had a growing social media presence, had just signed her first book deal, and had aspirations of homeschooling her toddler someday. We were both southern transplants to a northern area, and even after living here for several years, we were still not quite fluent in the special peculiarities of the language of the Midwest. We were the same in many ways, with one minor exception. She was about twelve years my junior.

Aside from the noticeable physical differences that an age gap of that magnitude reveals—namely, her body parts didn’t yet droop or give her sad feelings—it was clear she was in a completely different stage of mothering. She had one toddler still in diapers, hadn’t enjoyed a complete night’s sleep in nearly two years, and looked as if she could be the ringleader of the over-caffeinated stroller mafia who sprinted through the park every Thursday morning. Like them, she wore the face of a woman desperate for encouragement and adult interaction. 

I, on the other hand, had a house full of tweens and teens, all of whom could successfully wipe their bottoms and who no longer required me to cut up their meat at dinner. I could take a bath at my leisure without the threat of a little hand under the door wiggling for my attention and could run a quick errand without lugging along a small arsenal of “just in case” clothes, snacks, and toys. Obviously, mothering my older kids required commitment and self-sacrifice. But because they were much older, they were all remarkably self-sufficient.

As I sat across from this young mom, I was more than aware of our different mothering seasons. My kids still needed me. They just needed me in less relentless ways. Even with a fully committed husband by her side to help carry the load, this woman was in the mom-heavy years of mothering. To the casual observer, our lives may have looked quite similar, but in reality, we were poles apart.

With a pencil poised in one hand, ready to jot down whatever scheduling hacks I lobbed her way, she asked the million-dollar question every overwhelmed young mother has wondered at one time or another, myself included, “How did you do it all when you had little ones?”

“I didn’t,” was my flat reply.

Clearly, it was not the answer she was hoping for. She had taken time from her busy schedule to learn my winning strategies for maintaining balance, and my advice was aggressively underwhelming.

“Balance is a spotted unicorn,” I said. “A mythical creature that exists only in fairy tales, especially in the toddler years.” I couldn’t have been clearer about my position if I had explained it using sock puppets, yet she stared at me in utter confusion. I wasn’t trying to be glib or uncaring. I only wanted her to see that her dreams of being a public speaker, best-selling author, or even church ministry leader, while good, may not necessarily have been good for her right then. Just as different seasons of creation force us to live differently—eat foods when they are ripe, participate in activities according to the weather, and shift our energies for times of growth and times of rest—the seasons of mothering require us to live differently too.

As women, we can often fall into a scarcity mindset. We fixate on what we can’t do instead of fully appreciating what God’s given us to do right now. This may be especially true for young mothers, like this one, whose days are determined by the needs of those in their care.

As it happens, living lasts a lifetime. If the Proverbs 31 Woman has taught us anything, it’s that it doesn’t all need to be done in this season. When we speak of her, we often do so in hushed reverent tones, focusing our attention on the fact that she was diligent, industrious, and self-controlled. A matriarch of motherhood, she was the gold standard of women. One glance her way can be a bit demoralizing.

If your inner critic is anything like mine, I’d venture to guess that every time you open to that particular place in Proverbs, you begin to hiss a few choice words under your breath about how you don’t and won’t ever measure up. You allow this icon of the faith to cast a shadow over your motherhood, forgetting two essential parts of her story.

First, the woman mentioned in Proverbs 31 wasn’t a real woman. She was more of a composite example of many godly women made up by King Lemuel’s mother. Like a character in a childhood nursery rhyme, the lady of Proverbs was a caricature captured in an acrostic poem to help a young boy learn what kind of woman to look for when choosing a wife someday. Hers was the “Little Red Hen” fable of the day—a memorable recitation with a thinly veiled moral lesson. Her life was meant to be an inspiration, not a blueprint.

Second, the woman of Proverbs 31 wasn’t young. She was a seasoned mother with many miles of life behind her. It’s tempting to read how she selected wool and flax, bought a field and planted a vineyard, cared for the poor, sewed linen garments to sell, and then assume she did all of that while pregnant and toting a toddler on her hip. Likely, she didn’t. Most scholars agree that Proverbs 31:10–31 is a look back. It’s an accounting of decades of growth, change, and maturation. It’s not a snapshot of a moment but an album of many years. Her story should compel us toward contentment through every season of motherhood—to accept the limitations of the moment.

Excerpt from Overwhelmed Mom: Quiet the Chaos, Mind What Matters, and Enjoy Your Life Again by Jamie Erickson (© 2025). Published by Moody Publishers. Used by permission.

Jamie Erickson can be found encouraging and equipping a growing tribe of mothers all across the globe with her books Holy Hygge and Homeschool Bravely. She’s been married to her college sweetheart for over twenty-two years, and they live along the shores of Lake Superior in Minnesota.