0:00Episode 4203, when did I disappear? Mom's, it's time to rediscover, rejuvenate, and renew whom you are in mind body and spirit. Welcome to create your now your best selfie. The show that help you do just that. Here's your host, certified life coach, personal trainer, and nutritionist, Christian Wardo. Happy everyday, it's Friday! Happy to dance in like grandkids do. It is so much fun, but we gotta get serious. We're gonna have a tough discussion, but it's a good one I promise you. When did I disappear? For those of you who are brand new to create your now, welcome to this incredible family. I'm so delighted of your presence. If you already have the opportunity, you want to head on over to craturenow.com, where you can learn more and find it for the kids' newsletter. They keep it simple strategy, everyday solutions, to live, love, and impact. This episode is brought to you by AIM, Inspiring Connection, and Community.

1:00Well does get me excited because it is Friday. That means we've got great college ball coming on. Maybe you started off your week already with some college ball earlier and you had the NFL on Thursday. Yeah, that's our Friday Junior. Anyway, it's great, it's fun, rains in the forecast, but that's okay. Keep your smile on your face. Enjoy in your heart. Because even though being a mama is hard and it is hard, it's tough. We don't like it. It doesn't mean we still can't smile through the pain. It may hurt a little bit, so our smile may look a little bit different, but that doesn't make it less than and it definitely doesn't make you less than. Because you see, here's the story. I want to set the tone for today a little bit. It happened so slowly, you didn't even notice. One day, you were the woman with dreams of her own. Opinions spoken out loud. Hobbies not needing to justify. And then somewhere between the dinner dishes and dogs, she quietly left the room. Not dramatically, not with slamming the door.

2:02She just faded and nobody noticed. Not even you. So when did I disappear? If that question hits you somewhere deep, you're not alone and you're not broken. You are a woman who loved so hard, so completely that she forgot to save a seat for herself at her own table. When you were feeding your kids when they were a lot younger, how did you eat dinner? And I'm really asking this question seriously, because I can tell you how we did it. Mama didn't sit down until the babies were in bed and then I got to eat dinner. Now I'm not saying when they got older, it was different, but I was the short order cook with five kiddos. And when they were all eating real people food, I nursed every single one of them, very, very proud of that, would not change that. They didn't give an ounce of anything, but Mama's breast milk and that's fabulous.

3:04I know that that was the greatest gift I gave them when they were babies infants. And we did it for the year. They weaned themselves naturally and we went directly from there into milk, cold milk. Anyway, I tell you all that story because each child having five of them, they all have different sensitivities, what foods they like. Now I didn't sit here and fix like, oh, we're going to have pizza and chicken nuggets and we're going to have pasta and we're going to have this. I had usually one main ingredient and then from that main ingredient, I would do it off shoot as to what the kids liked in general and then I made sure Dad was happy too. So I was short order cook and there were times I would stand in the kitchen fixing everything and they would eat and all of that. I would have dishes half done, Dad would get fed and we're all there in the kitchen, but I really didn't sit down and eat dinner with him. I was present. We were in full conversation. They knew I was there. I did not miss a beat. But did I actually sit and break bread and that's what I'm talking about, right?

4:09We forget to save a seat for ourselves at our own table. We're taking care of everybody else and there's a season for that. I won't take that from me. I mean, that was something that I did by choice. It wasn't a bad thing. It wasn't negative, but it is something that added to, all right, when it comes to complicating motherhood. But here's what no one really likes to talk about when you become a mother, right? You're a world-hands-you-a-baby and then quietly takes your name. From that moment forward, your worth gets measured in lunches. How many lunches you packed, how many breakfasts you cook, how many dinners you show up for, your worth gets measured by how many fevers you managed, the schedules that you kept, and how many buckets of tears you wiped. You see, it has nothing to do with the measurement of your own tears, but everybody else's.

5:10And then comes the guilt. Oh, the guilt. We know it, right? Mom guilt is a heavy, uninvited companion and it's there for real and nobody talks about it. Nobody does. It shows up the moment you sit down for five minutes. It was spurs that rest is laziness. That when it's something for yourself means, oh, yeah, your selfish. What are you thinking about doing? That a good mom doesn't have needs. She meets them. And if you're not completely exhausted by the end of the day, you must not be doing enough. You better get something else on that calendar. You better say yes to one more thing. But here's what I can tell you. You did not fail. You did not become less. You loved so fiercely, so fully, that you just forgot to leave room for you. You gave and you gave and you gave and you gave until the woman you used to be became a stranger. And the saddest part is that you didn't even get to say goodbye to her.

6:14I think about motherhood and I think about women in the Bible and people we can look to. Like I look at my own mom, my grandma, my great-grandmother. I was very, very blessed to be able to have an incredible relationship with all of them. And as a young, you know, when I was the great-great-granddaughter, you know, and all of this, I mean, it was, I was one who wanted to watch. I had an aunt that I would sit there on the side of the toilet. I know it sounds strange. And I would sit there on the toilet on the side, technically, I guess, it's the side of the counter. And I would watch her put on makeup. I would just sit there and watch, I mean, mesmerize. And I learned techniques. She was a consultant for Mary K. No, Mary K is not a representative of this particular episode. But you know, maybe they should be. They're not sponsoring it. But you know, hey. And so I would sit there and watch her and I learned things by just watching. And that's kind of been my whole life that way. I mean, it was from when I was itty bitty little.

7:16My mom has told me this story. I mean, I don't remember those stories, but my mom has. And so then when I can pick up from the memory, I'm like, yeah, I used to do these things. And my own habits and what I did with others and what I do with people now, it just, you know, that's just where I'm at. Well, I was thinking about the Bible when I was thinking about this episode. And in Luke 10, Jesus is at Martha's home. And while her sister Mary sits at his feet, Martha is running around the kitchen, right, managing the meal and making sure everything is just right for everyone else. She's serving. She's giving. She's doing what a good woman does, right? Of course. And she's doing what is supposed to be expected of her and her thought, right? And she's doing it so hard that she finally breaks. And she goes to Jesus that says, essentially, don't you even care that I'm doing this all alone? Like, are you not noticing what I'm doing for you? And what does he say? He doesn't scold her.

8:18He doesn't tell her she's a bad host. He speaks her name twice. Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed. Or indeed, only one. My friend, he called her by name. He didn't say, hey, woman whose cook of my meal, hey, hostess, the one in the kitchen, is Martha, because he saw what she had forgotten that she was more than just what she was doing. It wasn't about the dinner dishes and dogs, right? That her identity didn't live in the serving. It lived in the bean. And somewhere between the bread and the worry, she had stopped being and started just surviving. How many of us are like Martha right now? Busy, stretched thin, exhausted, wondering why nobody sees how much they're carrying, and not realizing that we stopped seeing ourselves first.

9:22I lived that life for years. I did. And that was right before my husband came to me and said, I've fallen out of love. Now there's a much greater story to that, but if I just hone in on kind of my Martha moment, and it was after he told me that in my counseling and my therapy and my conversations with my pastor and with my confidant, I realized that I wasn't doing a bad thing. I hadn't failed. But I had lost who I was and who God wanted me to be. I was putting expectations on what I thought God wanted for me. Whoa, talk about flipping the tables. I flipped them on God. I was like, this is what you want me to do, right? I'm bringing kids to you. They're making a decision to follow you for the rest of their lives. And it's so exciting because these kids that I had an incredible time with them. And it's all over the U.S. I get to see them grow now and have their own families.

10:23I mean, it just makes my heart smile. Was that a good work? It was a good work. But the problem was I gave and I gave and I gave and I gave and I gave and I lost myself in the giving and the serving because that became the primary. And that doesn't mean that we need to not do that. It means that what, we've got to find the harmony, the harmony that God wants for us. And there's a season, right, for everything, a time for everything. My friend, when we were that busy and stretched thin and we're exhausted, that's what the disappearance looks like. It's not a dramatic exit. It's a thousand tiny surrenders. The hobby you stopped making time for. The friends you hadn't called in months. The dream you tucked away for, I'll get back to it later. That quietly turned into a never. It's ordering for everyone else at the table and forgetting to order for yourself. Literally and figuratively.

11:24I've done that too. Ordered everything. All of a sudden the waitress goes away. And my husband says, well, what did you get, baby? I'm like, oh, I didn't order anything. He's like, whoa, we need to get you ordered something. You see, the truth that guilt doesn't want us to hear and understand is recognizing the disappearance is the first brave step toward finding yourself again. The fact that you feel something missing, that's your soul waving her hand back and say, hello, all the way from the back of the room saying, I'm still here, come find me. Who do you see in the mirror? Psalm 139 verse 14 says, I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. My friend, that verse wasn't written only for the version of you that existed before

12:26kids, before marriage. It's for this you, right now, that tired you, the stretched thin you, the one that's burning the candle at 20 ends and it only has two. The one who can't remember the last time she did something just because it made her happy. My friend, you are still what fearfully and wonderfully made. That didn't expire when motherhood began. First Peter 3 verse 4 reminds us that the true beauty is the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. Unfading, not earned by how well you perform, not measured by how many things you checked off your list today. Your worth in God's eyes has never been about your output. It's about your input. It's your heart and he put it there. Your heart deserves to be tended to, not just poured out.

13:29So what do you do now? You start small. You start with seeing. What is your kiss to keep it simple? Strategy, see yourself again. Think about what you do now. I thought about it. I was right in this. I was like, yeah, what did I do back then? Because I've had to come through a lot of this stuff. That's why I'm sharing it with you because I know if I went through it, there's at least one other person in this world who it may not be the exact same thing, right? Because your life is going to look different. The circumstances are not going to be black and white and white. There's going to be a mixture of things, but it's the idea and the concept and you can relate to it. So think about what you do now. Are you one who just puts your feelings in your pocket and moves on to the next person who needs you? And let me tell you this, don't put your feelings in your pocket.

14:29There's a reason why you have feelings. It doesn't mean that you have to act upon them, but they're serving you for a purpose. Understand them. Understand what you need to so you can make the right decision as to what's next. So if you're the one who's putting those feelings in the pocket, where's that getting you? Or maybe you're one who knows that something needs to change. You just know you're not really sure, but you know and you've tried a few things, but nothing is stuck. You want something different, this empty, nesting thing, or you're getting close to it, the kids are older. So you're kind of like in high school in the college and you're like, we're getting close babe. And you're like, I don't even know if I know this person. And if you're single parent, it's a little bit even more disturbing because you're like, oh, the house was quiet before, but now it's really about to get quiet. I'm here to remind you, you can see yourself again and you can call yourself by name,

15:33not by title. So what does that look like in real life? Number one, ask the mirror question. Stay in front of a mirror for 60 seconds. That's only a minute, by the way. Just in case of your brain trying to process one minute, you're not here to fix anything. I just want you to see yourself. Say your name. Do Ellen, Pam, Christie, Tammy, Amy, Kisha, whatever your name is, say your name. Not mom, not the title, but your name. Remind yourself, I'm still here. Yeah, okay, Lord, I'm here. That's my name. And look at yourself, I to I, you are beautiful. I don't care what you have on your face. I don't care if your grandson comes up to you and says, grandma, look at all those bites.

16:33And he goes, you got stuff on your face too. Yeah, I do. Grandma's not perfect, but I'm still beautiful. And my friends, so are you. You ask the mirror question, call yourself by name. Number two, reflect on the sentence here. Something I used to love that I haven't done in a long time is, maybe it's ice skating. I don't know, that just came to mind. So I'm going to use that as an example. Don't act on it yet. Just let yourself remember. I remember what it was like when we lived on the lake. We were up north in Indiana and it got cold. And we would have feats of snow. I know, that's not grammatically correct, but for this episode, it's all about mamas we're using feats. We got feats of snow. To the point where we would be out for a full week now, there's just talk about snow and everybody freaks out and they're like, we're just canceling this and cancel down.

17:35Like, boy, and we have more stuff available to clear roads, but we still cancel everything. Right? We'll leave that whole discussion for another episode. But I remember, and I remember when it would get so cold, and I didn't like the cold, oh, but I loved being able to put on my own ice skate that I got for Christmas one year. I was able to skate and I had my own ice skating rink, the entire lake. Now let me tell you this, I did not ever ice skate across the whole lake. Why? My parents are smarter than that. And number two, and so am I. I'm a good listener. So I wasn't going to put myself at all, you know, a safety issue where you know you go and crack ice. Yeah, no, we didn't have cracked ice problems. We made sure the depth was solid, et cetera. So we did all of that just so you know. But allow yourself to reflect on it. I mean, it just brightens my day when I think about that. It was a time in my life that I got to dream of being the Olympian on ice.

18:37It could be me. I was a little girl still then as an elementary school. So I had a dream. Allow yourself to reflect a little bit. And then finally number three, apologize no more for having needs. The next time you need something, maybe it's rest. Maybe you just need a timeout, you need space. I need a moment, mama needs a moment. Stayed it without saying sorry. Your needs are not an inconvenience and neither are you. Sometimes we act that way, don't we? Mama, I want you to hear this loud and clear. As if I've got the, you know, the big, huge blowhorn here, yelling at screaming, right? You're in the middle of the football field and you hear the entire stadium, 75,000 people saying you didn't disappear because you weren't enough.

19:38You disappeared because you gave too much of yourself without anyone including you, making sure there was something left. You can't pour into others what you've already poured out of yourself. You can't give love if you've given it all away. If you don't have love for yourself, you can't give it away, right? You can't do it. And you've been pouring for a long, long time. You see the woman you were before the title of mom when that landed on your shoulders? She's not gone. She's just buried under the two list and the carpool schedule. So they did not register the dogs and the guilt that told her she didn't deserve to take up space. Yet she's still in there and she is worth looking for. Jesus didn't look at Martha and see her problem. He saw a woman who had forgotten, who had forgotten her own name and he spoke it back to her,

20:44gently, lovingly, because that's what he does. He calls us back to ourselves, not to the version of us that performs well enough to feel worthy, but to the version of us that was already worthy before we ever did a single thing. So today, take that one step. Just one. Look in the mirror. Say your name. It's a beautiful name. Remember what you love and let the journey back to yourself begin, not with guilt, but with grace. You know it, one step at a time needs to beles of greatness. You are more than mama and own my friend. You are worth every step it takes to find her again. Go in peace. Be present. Be incredible. Be you. I love you so very much. I cannot wait to see you on the other side. Blessing tags and lots and lots of love.

21:45We'll talk to you real soon. Have a glorious blessed weekend. Bye bye.