Learning to Love My Limitations

On the de-proletarianization of motherhood and work

Ruth Haley Barton, in her book Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, spends an entire chapter talking about limitations. “When we refuse to live within limits, we are refusing to live with a basic reality of human existence. There is a finiteness to what I can do in this body. There is a finiteness to how many relationships I can engage in meaningfully at one time. There is a finiteness to time–how many hours there are in a day, how many days there are in a week and how much can be done in those blocks of time. There is a finiteness to my energy…Our unwillingness to live within limits–both personally and in community–is one of the deepest sources of depletion and eventual burnout.”¹

As an undeniable choleric, I hate acknowledging limitations. I like to fall into the ego-centric belief that with firm determination, I can truly do anything, and I’ve been prone for years to pushing myself past what is healthy for me, not to mention truly effective in yielding fruit. My first boss (looking at you,

Joan Watson

) would often have to remind me when she discussed an upcoming project or task with me that I didn’t need to do it right now. My husband has to regularly remind me of the same: not everything needs to be figured out, solved, planned right now.

That’s my default position: that everything must be done now, and that I must do it. Not exactly a recipe for success or interior peace.

I’ve been writing a bit more about the relationship between motherhood and work, not because I necessarily know anything about it, but because it’s the place in which I find myself. As C.S. Lewis says, I’m writing so that I can understand. Thinking about and wrestling with the tension between my motherhood and the professional work I’ve been called to at this time has been not just a task for my mind, but truly one for my soul. My life, it seems, is full of the limitations that I used to despise. I simply cannot do all things, and I definitely cannot do them right now.

I wrote in my piece on maternal work culture that interruptions are invitations, and to be honest, that’s a prayer that I feel I pray daily–to welcome interruptions as Christ did. He treated each person as the true task in front of Him, not a hindrance to His original plan. One of the most difficult realities of motherhood for me to adjust to has been what feels like a fragmentation of my time and attention; the feeling that I no longer have permission to set my mind to something and see it through without another need quickly presenting itself. I can structure and schedule all damn day, but it doesn’t hold true. Little hands tug at my jeans, babies wake up earlier than predicted, the list goes on. I can build rhythm, yes, but it must be welcoming of change.

The work setup I’ve chosen is not built to overcome this reality, it’s built around it. I chose to work remotely, to use minimal and in-home childcare, and I chose work policies and processes for myself and my employees that allow for life–and in my life, children–to not be treated like a hindrance to excellence in work. In choosing this, I know I’m honoring the parts of my heart that God is stirring and asking me to bring into tandem. There’s nothing wrong with other ways moms choose to live their days–full-time homemaking, engaging in paid work, or somewhere in between (the place I find most mothers fall these days). But I’ve looked and re-looked at the setup I’ve chosen, and I know it’s the right one for us right now. Partly because, as I’ve been reflecting, it makes me smack the brick wall of my limitations.

The way I approached my to-do list, whether physical or mental, has not been healthy for most of my life. Not everything is meant to be done or solved as quickly as possible; in fact, I’d venture to say most things are not meant to be treated that way. When I’m not barreling ahead, I feel “switched off” and can be prone to laziness and escapism; my husband and I have joked that I have “two speeds.” I’m not alone in approaching life like this–I think it’s a side effect of what Josef Pieper calls the “workaday world,” or the world of the proletariat: “the man who is fettered to the process of work.”² Further, the totalitarian workaday world is characterized by “the ultimate tying of the worker to production. For the process of production itself is understood and proclaimed as the activity that gives meaning to human existence.”³ Our productivity is evaluated based on time spent “working” beginning when we’re adolescents–but what defines “work” is far is not the uniqueness of the life in front of us, but the wider cultural (often utilitarian) system that borders on the robotic. This system is what pushes us to study harder to pass that AP class in high school so we can have a *chance* of getting into our dream college, only to find ourselves grinding in college to graduate with honors or snag that internship, only to find ourselves in the world of work as another cog in the wheel. In the U.S., we are taught to be fettered to the process of work starting when we’re young–in other words, we’re taught not to have limitations, or that if we do have them, they can be overcome by the right amount of time and dedication. Proletarianism is celebrated in the workforce, though I think many companies and organizations are trying to reverse that attitude and implement policies that respect limitations. Places that respect the natural limitations of mothers, though, are few and far between. Where overwork is celebrated and a sign of merit, mothers will be the first in line to experience the cost. If productivity is the measure of a life’s meaning, then no one’s life has less meaning than a mother.

It’s taken me a while to recognize that the modern discourse around motherhood doesn’t transcend the proletarian attitude, it often is underpinned by it. I have found this in traditional, conservative circles as well as more progressive ones. The attitude is similar to the fetters of the workaday world: not only must everything be done for their children, it must be the mothers that do it. This can take so many forms it’s hard to begin to list some examples, and yes, there are many responsibilities that must be the task of the mother (pregnancy and childbirth, for one!). Put simply, I mean that when mothers must always mother in action and refuse to accept that they are human with limitations, I find the attitude of the workaday world just as present as in the cog-in-the-wheel mechanized workforce. When we measure our care for our children by a list of accomplishments and activities and hours spent–quantifiable metrics–we’ve lost ourselves in the proletarian mentality. I’m not saying motherhood is a hat we can take on and off–that, too, would be a proletarian attitude. Rather, I’m saying that if we never acknowledge our need for solitude, rest, even individuality…perhaps we’re basing merit on a certain kind of productivity and overwork, too. As Pieper says, “...to be tied to the process of work may be ultimately due to the inner impoverishment of the individual: in this context everyone whose life is completely filled by his work[…]is a proletarian because his life has shrunk inwardly, and contracted, with the result that he can no longer act significantly outside his work, and perhaps can no longer even conceive of such a thing.”⁴

I’ve been deeply frustrated by my limitations over the past few years–like I wrote above, the inability to set my mind to a task and see it through to completion. The lack of space, quiet, independence–however much I love my children, I’ve been grieving it, and I’ve stopped feeling guilty about that fact. There are many things about my life before children that I loved. Such is the sacrifice, and one that I’m forever grateful I get to make. But, that doesn't mean there isn’t pain. Whether it’s the baby that refuses to nap or is cluster-feeding or a toddler going through the “Mommy, what’s that?” as she points at every inanimate object-phase, children make themselves known. As they should. I cannot leave motherhood behind to engage in my professional work, nor do I really want to. But neither can I treat my motherhood like I have everything else: a to-do list in which I never let go of control and feel crushing defeat if I slow down or accept any help. I burn out, just like in my professional work.

My way of life, as it currently stands, is challenging me to not only face my limitations but to learn, perhaps, to love them. The tug of the hand at my jeans is slowly loosening the proletariat in me, and the call to my professional work is ironically also reminding me that I’m human and need a place in which to create (there are many ways to meet this need beyond professional work, again reiterating that this is my current call). In both spaces I have to reckon with the ways I’ve enslaved myself to productivity, hustle, and overwork. My motherhood does limit my capabilities in the workplace currently, and thank God that it does. Conversely, my work does limit what I spend my time with my children doing and where I base my identity as a mother, and thank God that it does, too. The tension is calling me to value presence over productivity, to whatever is right in front of me. My soul-level collision with my limitations was always part of the plan–His plan. They teach me how much my children truly matter, how valuable my own solitude before Him is, and finally, how to slow down.

Pieper’s solution to the proletarian mindset is leisure, not imposed as an outside requirement (thus conceding to the proletarian mindset yet again), but as something that humans can “occupy.” We don’t just need leisure, we need to become the kind of people that can truly leisure. “The provision of an external opportunity for leisure is not enough,” he writes. “It can only be fruitful if the man himself is capable of leisure.”⁵ In leisure, we’re not “switching off;” it’s not a means to an end–we’re not recharging so we can get back to the grind, whatever our particular grind may be. Instead, it’s how we “overstep the frontiers of the everyday workaday world, not in external effort and strain, but as though lifted above it in ecstasy.”⁶ Barton writes that there is “something deeply spiritual about living within our God-ordained limits—or to put it another way, living fully and acceptingly within our own set of realities.”⁷ Perhaps symbiosis between leisure, motherhood and work is simply learning to live in an acceptance of reality, an acceptance of your limits.

Finally, Pieper says, the essence of leisure is celebration.⁸ This is the challenge I have felt slowly beckoning me in my life as it is: can I not only see my limitations, my desperate need to just be human, but can I celebrate it? Can I relish in the state of man, because of the reality of God?

My limitations, however frustrating they may feel, are actually an invitation to transcendence. They’re a chance to recognize that my worth is not based on how focused my workday was, or how well I think I cared for my home and children. My worth is, always has been, and always will be based on something intrinsic that I must take time to pause, remember, and allow to direct my course. My limitations, simply, are an invitation to recognize something infinitely Limitless–the love of God that permeates every moment, every task in front of me, my work (both professional career and that of motherhood) and my leisure, if I let it. I can love my limitations, because Love is so far beyond my limitations…and day in and day out, I can celebrate that.

1. Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, 111.

2. Leisure the Basis of Culture, 57.

3. Ibid., 60.

4. Ibid., 58.

5. Ibid., 63.

6. Ibid., 73.

7. Barton, 112.

8. Ibid., 65.