Abundance 04: I Don’t Have Enough Patience—An Interview with Maryanne Challies Helms Transcript

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

---

Emily Jensen: Well, welcome, Maryanne, to the Risen Motherhood podcast. I am truly so thrilled to be chatting with you here because you and I have been able to chat a little bit over Voxer—maybe over the last six months or so—and I have really, really enjoyed our conversations, and I have learned so much from you. When we were thinking about who to talk to for this series, I was like, "I have got to get Maryanne on here because I know she's talked to me about all these different things, and I want other moms to hear some of your wisdom."

Before we jump into the topic at hand, I would love it if you would just tell us a little bit about who you are, the various callings that the Lord has put on your life, and what a day looks like for you.

Maryanne Helms: Well, I am married to my husband Pat, and we live in Atlanta, Georgia. We're north of the city in a small little county called Cherokee County, and we love it here. It's a little quieter than it is south of us. We have four young adult children. Our oldest just turned twenty-one a couple of weeks ago, and our youngest is about to turn fourteen in August. We have two sons and two daughters, and they're twenty-one, nineteen, sixteen, and fourteen. That keeps us very busy and mainly busy in the evenings.

I've learned with teenagers—they definitely come alive at night, just when you're wanting to not be awake, and you want to settle in. That's when they tend to come alive. There has been a part of my parenting that's had to really shift into being more of an evening parent. 

We live in Atlanta, and my husband works for IBM, and he's worked for them for many years—since before we were married. He's a developer, so he develops the software that's behind your phones. Your phone plans essentially is what he does.

A day in my life is very different now than when I was a young mom. The sameness of young motherhood is something that I at times miss, but I'm also feeling somewhat liberated from that at the same time. Something about not having to be bound to the house and naps and set mealtimes and all of that is really nice. In the past few years, a lot of my day-to-day has been taken up with—I love to lead Bible book studies, one-to-one mentoring of younger women, volunteering in church contexts or school contexts.

I found that really fulfilling again—to be a little bit more out of the home than I was able to be in the younger years. That's a summary.

Emily: I know that you do a little bit of writing too on Instagram and sharing things that are going on in your life, so definitely a great person to follow if somebody's looking for a mom in another season of life. I've really valued your balanced and wise perspective a little bit out of the thick and the heat of the little years, which is really, really helpful.

Today, we're mainly talking about the topic of patience. It was funny because, when this topic came up for Laura and I, we were like, "We're going to ask somebody about a time in motherhood where they didn't have patience," and it feels like it's all the moments. In what moment did I have patience? [Laughter]

I know that this is a big question—a broad question—and so I'll let you take it wherever you want. Because it could either be a time when you didn't have patience with something that was going on with your kiddos in a moment or just patience for where God has you and what he's doing in your life and what he's doing in your child's life.

I know that that's more—some of the things that you and I have talked a lot about over the last six months or so is just how hard it can be when God is doing something, and it's maybe not as fast or as clear as you want, and it's just really, really hard to be content where he has you. I'll kick that off to you. What's a time you felt like you were lacking patience?

Maryanne: Well, I remember very distinctly—largely because I've kept such detailed journals over the years—but I remember so distinctly being challenged in patience when my kids were small just because there is a certain level of chaos that's different when kids are little. I'm fairly orderly—at least I think of myself as fairly routine-oriented and orderly—and so the chaos of the little years was actually really difficult for me at times—just having so many interruptions.

In hindsight, I think that those little day-to-day interruptions prepared me. I'm sure many mid-life moms—older moms—would say that those do prepare you for some of the longer-haul patience journeys you're going to be on. For me, some of my patience story is really related most recently to suffering. God has taken me through a very long patient season that was not directly related to motherhood but certainly affected my motherhood.

It began late December 2019. We lost my father very suddenly and unexpectedly. That was followed fairly quickly by the loss of my brother's son, and that was followed by the loss of my husband's job. Of course, that was also—that last job piece—was in the middle of the pandemic. As though we weren't already struggling—everyone else was struggling as well with the unknowns of a global situation that none of us had ever encountered before.

Alongside those elements of suffering, both of our daughters started to really manifest symptoms of great physical and emotional grief and trauma, and those started to come out in really difficult ways. I'm not really able to speak to the particulars of those at this time, but it was a long process of working through some really deep-rooted trauma responses.

I remember thinking—what was interesting is—I thought many times, looking back, “I'm so grateful the Lord doesn't let us see how long our trials will last,” because up until that point, my patience had been tested by fairly mundane things. I say that—it might sound almost silly—but I had not encountered anything of major trauma to that point. Most of my patience work had been done in the mundane, and then God shifted that category to something that was much higher in intensity and higher trauma, and so I had to learn an entirely new set of tools.

The Lord has really, really had to teach me the endurance link to patience and how endurance really glorifies the Lord but how difficult it is to endure well. That's kind of the context of a lot of the conversations you and I have had over Voxer.

Emily: I really love how you started with young motherhood and the mundane, and now you're helping show how that is also linked to what you're facing now in midlife with older children. Because I think, as a mom of young children, you feel like, “This is the most patience I'm ever going to need—right now, when they are pulling on me, and they're waking up multiple times a night, and they're crying, and they're interrupting, and they are disobeying me over and over and over and over again.” You almost—at least I felt like this—of like, "Okay, if I can just get through these years and have some patience with them, patience is going to be easier when they get older. I'm not going to have to be as patient because I won't be irritated, or I won't be—this won't be instigated as often as it is now."

What you and I have been talking about, and I think what you're sharing here is that God is actually preparing you in a later season for a depth of patience and endurance you're going to continue to need. He’s growing your capacity for patience and that may not look like kids up in the middle of the night. It may not look like kids pulling on your clothes or having a meltdown or not obeying you, but it may be another level of suffering that you're going to have to trust God in the midst of, even though it keeps going on and on and on and on, and it feels like there's not necessarily like a clear end in sight or a clear solution in sight.

I know that really caught me off guard, and it was really helpful to me when you came in, just a few steps ahead of me—a few years ahead of me—to go, "I actually think that that's what a lot of moms experience in midlife and when their kids get into the teenage years." It's just a different level and type of patience. Just to get down more into the nitty gritty, what was your initial way of reacting to or dealing with this sense of lack around patience, if that makes sense?

Maryanne: I can remember this still very clearly—again, because so much of it is written down in these sorts of heartfelt journals, but I remember thinking, “I got through those little years to be done with some of this. Some of these elements of parenting—I've put in my time. I don't want to do this level of intensity anymore.” I think that's a pretty normal place to get to, especially by the time you're in those middle/high school years. You are feeling a little bit more of your humanity and your weariness. All the up in the nights and the long days—they really have taken a physical and emotional toll, and you're feeling tired.

My initial reaction was a little bit of frustration with God—that I was thinking I was in the clear. Looking back, of course, that was naive. God does not promise that at all, but I had promised myself something, and it was a false promise. The Lord really had to gently confront me in my own entitlement: “This is what I'm owed at this stage in parenting.”

There was a lot of ground-level work that had to be done in my heart. You heard some of that as we talked and just significant spiritual maturity that had to happen. I think that's the thing with patience or any spiritual attribute we want to cultivate—there's just a long process of maturity. It's gained in inches—any of that growth.

Emily: Oh, what you said about thinking we're entitled to something at a certain stage of parenting is—oh, that's just a gut punch. That's right where I feel like I'm at right now, and I would imagine many moms listening, especially some that have potentially been listening to Risen Motherhood from the early years, and they started with babies and toddlers. Like you said, it can feel like, "No, I put in that time. I put in those years, and I should have freedom now. I should have sleep now. I should not get interrupted anymore. My time shouldn't have the same demands that it had when they were little."

That is just not the case. In fact, if there's something that I've learned from you, along with many other moms who are a few steps ahead of me—and I've been having a lot of these conversations in the last year—sometimes the time demands get greater. They increase. And capacity actually can decrease in these years, and it's catching me off guard. 

I was wondering if you would speak to a little bit of what it looks like to have patience with yourself as a mom—either because you're walking through a season of grief or lower capacity as you get older and just feeling like, "I didn't think this would be where I'm at at this stage. I thought I would be further. I thought I would be freer. I thought I would be more back to myself, or I thought my marriage would be in a better spot." Can you speak to that? What does it look to be patient with the work God is doing in our hearts as a mom?

Maryanne: That's a very good question, and it's one that I don't think is natural to easily answer. I think that what can be confusing about it is—if you've typically seen yourself as higher capacity, it can be a shock to your system and to your whole mindset to think, "I have gone from being high capacity to being low capacity within the span of a month or two." That's what a shock or a trauma will do. It will take you from high to low pretty quickly.

You have to quickly calibrate “What are realistic expectations for myself?” and you have to begin to actually explain those to other people as well. People who might have seen you in a higher capacity category now have to learn to see you in a lower capacity category. The whole aspect of that is really challenging to navigate. For me, it looked like, in a sense, respecting the terms of the fall, and that sounds dramatic, but I had to really scale back and recognize the Lord is in control of this world. He is sovereign over everything.

Because of the fall, some of the providences we experience are very, very difficult. In a sense, we have to just respect that those are the terms of life in this world, and many things that happen to us that challenge our patience and our endurance are nothing to do with us. The only thing we can do is learn how to respond well to them because we didn't cause them. We are just sort of at their mercy.

Learning that was really, really difficult for me but, in the end, has proven to be very helpful because I can now apply this whole capacity model to other challenging situations. Going back to your question, it looked like defining and accepting that my ability to handle life was lower, and then alongside that, it looked like gently explaining that to people who might have previously seen me as someone who could do more.

That was really humbling to do. It was really hard to recognize that I wouldn't be seen as someone who was as competent for a time. It was very, very difficult. Much more than I would've ever thought before I encountered all of the losses we did.

Emily: Just to provide some additional context—again, thinking more about potentially what a mom in her season of life where she has older elementary through middle and high school—those are the seasons that you and I have been talking about. We've mentioned here there can be a lot of griefs that come up in life at this point for most women—most moms. Sometimes there is an aging parent situation going on—maybe the death of a parent. There can be significant other health issues going on in the family.

I know you shared with me just like—teenagers go through a lot of struggles and sometimes struggles that you can't openly and easily share with other moms in the same way that you can share about your sleep issues [Laughter] or whatever—or your nursing issues. They are not things that you can go on social media and say, "Hey, my teen is struggling with X, Y, and Z," and maybe the load of grief gets a little bit heavier.

I even think it's helpful for me to say, to your point, both because of the fall and because of just the way the patterns and the seasons of life works, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm doing something really wrong or that a mom has really failed. It's like—this is part of walking with the Lord. And part of living after the fall is—this is normal, unfortunately. This is normal, but God is also able to provide patience in that suffering.

I like how you brought up the word endurance because that's really what I've learned. If we're talking about this inch by inch, these are things that can take years to walk through and see the fruit of. It's not just something that gets resolved within a couple of days or a few weeks. I really appreciate you breaking that down for us. 

One of the things I wanted to make sure we touch on—of course, we're in this series of Abundance—is just: what does it look like for you specifically? I know you've mentioned a few things, but to depend on the Lord when you need patience—how has he shown up for you in that?

Maryanne: I think, often, the Lord shows up most kindly through other Christians. Because he doesn't show up bodily until his return, he shows up bodily through other believers. I think learning to accept words of kindness and empathy from other Christians has really shown me how the Lord thinks of me. Many, many times in the past few years, I felt very disappointed in myself. I think that's one of the harder elements of any long-term suffering or endurance. You tend to feel a little bit insecure in yourself because you're not performing perhaps up to your own standard.

Other Christians coming alongside me and recognizing the challenges in my life and speaking things into my life—such as "You're doing well considering what you're bearing"—has been really, really encouraging and helpful. I've seen that as the Lord speaking to me through his people. 

Simple things to do with protecting my body, even—just gaining more rest. You would not believe the effect that long-term exhaustion takes on a body. So many young moms are in a place of just total exhaustion, and they don't recognize how much that is affecting their day to day.

I think, as your children start to get older, you can address things like that in your life and start to take a little bit better care of yourself. Some physical addressing has been really necessary in my life as well, and all of that, of course, creates the environment in which you can then have more patience. If you feel better and you're better rested, you're likely to show up better for your family. Those are practical things, but God really has been so kind to show me more healthy ways to operate. I'm grateful for that because I operated on a fairly irresponsible level, to some extent, as a younger mom—just neglecting a lot of parts of myself that needed care.

Emily: It's so interesting to think about the link between our bodies and our spiritual health and just how God works in and through that to produce the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. I know that's something I've learned a lot in these past years. Even thinking about an athlete that trains for endurance—there's an element of caring for and conditioning the body so that they can go out and run in a race setting and go really, really, really far because they have practiced a little bit at a time, going a little farther, a little farther, a little farther and then really taking care of their body up and before that race so that when the time comes, they can really go.

I think, to your point, I've just realized as my body is getting older, those margins become razor thin in terms of rest and physical nourishment and maybe taking care of past hurts or past traumas that need to be resolved so that I'm not triggered in that in the moment and then the way that that comes out in my parenting or whatever those things are.

I think that's something I've noticed as I've gotten older—that even in something like patience, God is doing a work in my heart. It's multifaceted. It is the Word, it is prayer, it is other people speaking to it, but there's also—I'm a whole person, and I have a body too, and there's elements with the body that you realize it is harder to endure and use kind responses and persevere with others when you're really, really hungry or you're really, really tired. How can you also be thinking about and addressing those things? I think that's really helpful.

Maryanne: Then one other thing that's a practical element related to that, I think, is also looking around for ways you can eliminate things that trigger impatience. I always go back to, for the young mom, the social media landscape that they're raising their children in, because it is much more dialed up than it was when I was a young mom. I think if you can address honestly the things that perhaps whittle away at your patience—and social media is probably one of them—that could be a whole other conversation.

Helping to understand too yourself “What are the things that make me more irritable, make me less pleasant, less enjoying of my family?”—that can also really help. Not that we eliminate things easily or quickly but just recognizing, “Maybe I need to have less of this in my life to be more patient in another context.”

Emily: That's such a helpful thought about even how we battle sin and cultivate godly virtues in our lives—going, “What is actually taking up a lot of my mental and emotional capacity to the point where that tank is already 80% or 90% full because I've given it out online, or I've been arguing with someone in the comments over something all day, or I really got riled up about something someone posted?” And now that emotional tank has already been used up or poured out like a lot and then when a child comes in and needs something, you get to that max capacity really fast. Boy, I've learned that the hard way.

In some seasons, I almost can't do social media, and I've had to take longer breaks because actually reading about all the things that are going on in the world and all the arguments that are happening online and all the things—it takes up too much of my emotional capacity to the point where it wears out that patience and that long-suffering for others because I've already exhausted it on things that have nothing to do with my life inside my home that day. I love that you added that.

For this series, again, we are focusing on abundance. I would love it if you would share with us something that you love about the abundance of God's sovereignty and his plans and his timing for our lives. He is utterly patient. He is utterly good in that. How does that encourage you?

Maryanne: When our children are young—this is one thing that I believed about God that was probably not entirely true. I think, when I was raising young children, small toddlers, etc., I tended to think that the Lord viewed me in the same way that I was parenting my children—in a very constant, "Why did you do that? What are we doing?" Corralling me all the time. I think young moms have to be in that place to be good moms and to be attentive moms.

I think, somehow, I connected the Lord to myself in a young parenting, almost impatient way. I think that the longer I've grown in my faith, and I've grown in my parenting and my motherhood, I've learned that God's patience is so much more abundant for me than mine is toward my own children—toward myself. I think it takes a long time to learn that.

I think we have to walk through some failure and some unknowns and some personal difficulties—maybe challenging our own theories about motherhood and whatnot—to get to a place where we are very comfortable with the fact that God loves us in our imperfection and that his grace for us is so much more abundant than it is for ourselves or even for our children. That has come home to me over and over again. That's really been through brokenness.

I've seen God's abundant kindness through brokenness. I never felt that same freedom in the Lord when I was more whole in my own view of myself. It's come through being very broken and realizing that he rejoices over me with singing whether I'm performing as best I can or not. That means more to me than anything. I think that then opens the door to a really longstanding friendship with the Lord. Not hiding from him but recognizing, like a good friend, he will walk with you through any season. That would probably be the way that I've most seen his abundance—his kindness in brokenness.

Emily: I love that. Sometimes I think I can see in motherhood so many different areas that I need to fix or correct or get back on track. Maybe not just motherhood, but there's things in marriage and then there's things professionally, and you can just see dozens of things at any given time that you're like, "Ah, I really need to grow in this. I really need to correct this. I really need to pray about this." Just to recognize— God is working in all those areas over a lifetime, and he's not asking or working to fix all of those things perfectly all at the same time. He's very gracious to do that and lead us in different seasons in different ways.

I just go back to that promise of—God is going to complete the work that he started in us in Christ Jesus. He knows that for sure. We can know that for sure. It is going to be completed. In that, there can be patience. I love that reminder. 

Just to close today, Maryanne, what would you say to a mom who's listening who feels like she does not have enough patience today, either for the little ones around her or for something that's going on in her life? What encouragement would you give her?

Maryanne: Well, I always find the most encouragement in my own life from Charles Spurgeon. I read as much of his writing as I possibly can, and one of my favorite books or a series of books is his sermons. It's a collected sermon series for his students, but in that sermon series, he talks about times when we are struggling, whether it's in depression, discouragement—anything. His reminder is to remember that the Lord is what he calls “training our graces.” I think that is really helpful for young moms to remember. 

A lot of your young motherhood is feeling you're getting absolutely nowhere. But in all of that—because the Lord does desire our maturity, and he wants us to be conformed to his likeness, and he wants our children to be conformed to his likeness—he's collectively “training our graces” as we raise our families—our own, our children's, our husband's. I think if we can just remember that—if young moms can remember it's not futile. The Lord is really doing deep work that can't be done in any other context except through enduring and navigating discouragement and coming out the other side of it. I think that can encourage—even on the hardest day—to not look at our circumstances as mistakes from the Lord's view but purposeful context in which to grow into more beautiful women. That surely can encourage us to know that it's all for good.

Emily: Yes. It's like, when we know something is happening, there is a purpose to the suffering. There's a purpose to the struggle. There is progress in the midst of that. That can sometimes be the very encouragement that we need to keep waiting, to keep trusting, to keep having faith because we know that God promises that he is working for our good in the midst of things, even if it's really, really tough. And he is building that endurance. He's building that character so that we can keep growing and following him. Thank you so much, Maryanne, for chatting with us today. I'm just grateful for your wisdom and your willingness to share some of the things you've learned with us.

Maryanne: Thank you for having me. It's always a joy to talk with you, Emily.