Whatever Is Excellent with Leanne Tuggle

06: Untangling Excellence in Motherhood with Shelley Tyson

• Leanne • Season 1 • Episode 6

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What does excellence in motherhood really mean?

Join us as we uncover this profound question with our guest, Shelley, a devoted mother of four, who shares her honest and inspiring journey. Raised with strong maternal figures and a homeschooling background, Shelley believed she had motherhood all figured out—until reality hit. In our conversation, she opens up about the "untangling process" she went through, aligning her preconceived notions with the actual experience of being a mom. Shelley redefines what it means to excel in motherhood by focusing on spiritual fruits and values from Galatians 5 and Philippians 4, offering wisdom that is both heartfelt and deeply insightful.

Maintaining a sense of excellence and balance at home can be a daunting task, especially for mothers. Shelley shares practical tips, such as establishing quiet times for children, that help create a nurturing and balanced environment. We delve into the challenges of staying motivated and maintaining personal routines when external structures are absent. Shelley emphasizes grounding oneself in spiritual practices as a way to navigate these trials. This chapter underscores the importance of setting a strong foundation for children and the personal growth that comes from aligning daily actions with faith and purpose.

Identity and mindset are crucial in navigating motherhood, and Shelley emphasizes that true excellence comes from recognizing who we already are. She passionately reframes the often-dreaded teenage years with excitement and optimism, offering a new perspective on this life stage. This episode is brimming with valuable insights and encouragement for mothers at every stage of their journey.

Get in touch with Shelley over on Instagram @shelleyctyson or you can subscribe to her bi-weekly email of encouragement: https://shelleytyson.myflodesk.com/


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Leanne:

Shelley, thank you so much for being here. It is such a joy to be able to be here together with you. You are someone that I have just always looked up to and admired, both as a mom, as a Christian woman, and so I'm just really excited for this conversation. And before we jump into the conversation, would you mind just telling us a little bit about who you are and your family and that kind of thing?

Shelley:

Well, leanne, it's such an honor and a privilege to be able to be here. I have been thinking about this for quite some time since you reached out, and just so excited to be able to talk with you. I know you and I crossed paths in kind of a different context and now to be able to talk about motherhood with you is just such a gift, and so thank you for having me on. I am a mom of four kiddos. I have three girls and a little boy at the end. He's not so little anymore, so the girls are 13, 9, 11. And then my son is almost eight at the bottom, and my husband and I reside right outside Atlanta, georgia, and we have been here for all of our married life for 15 years almost 16 years now and my motherhood journey really has been such a winding journey I think it's the best way I know how to describe it.

Shelley:

I kind of backtracking a little bit my background. I was homeschooled K through 12 and was raised by an incredible mother. She was just the model of, in my opinion, what a mother should be, and so I walked into my motherhood journey honestly thinking I was over equipped, and the reason that I say that is because I also had incredible grandmothers who were strong mothers, and they all just were examples of not just what a good mom is, but what a godly mom can be. And so I walked into motherhood thinking how hard can this be? And now, 14 years, almost on the other side of it. I laughed, thinking that I thought that. But I think that I thought, well, I have so many resources, this should be such a cinch. And I found out very quickly after I first was born that I didn't have all the things that I needed, all the tools that I needed, and yet it took two more children for the Lord to really bring me to a place of open handedness in my motherhood before him.

Shelley:

And I really came to this place of saying, like my motherhood doesn't look like what I want it to look like.

Shelley:

And I really came to this place of saying, like my motherhood doesn't look like what I want it to look like.

Shelley:

And I couldn't really tell you exactly what that was supposed to be, but somewhere in the back of my mind I just thought I feel like I'm completely overwhelmed, I'm exhausted all the time, I'm not taking care of myself and my home feels like it's not a peaceful place, and I don't like any of this, and there must be a different way. And so my motherhood since that point has really been the best way I know how to describe it is kind of an untangling process of untangling maybe some of the things that I thought it was supposed to look like, uh, and embracing the things that God has for me and my motherhood, and um, we could sit and talk all day about all the difficult lessons, of course, that I've learned along the way, but motherhood, by far of all the things that I've done in my life, has been the most rewarding and the hardest thing I've ever done, and so I'm so insanely grateful that the Lord has called me to this and that he is still equipping me for motherhood.

Leanne:

Yeah, oh, that's so good. There's so many great things. I love how you said untangling process that I think that that makes so much sense. We come from. We bring into our parenting journey everything that we experienced as we were growing up, and it's it's funny to hear what you share. It's very similar to mine too Also homeschooled great parents, and so it and it's funny to hear what you share. It's very similar to mine too Also homeschooled great parents and so it's interesting to see how we have to untangle and take apart what are preconceived ideas to the current journey that we're in. So that's really great. I'm curious to hear a little bit about what excellence looks like for you as a mother in your current journey that you're in right now. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

Shelley:

Well, it's interesting that you bring up that word. I love that your whole podcast is around this idea of excellence, because that really was what I was wanting in my motherhood and I wasn't experiencing, at least on a tangible level, in those moments where I was wanting in my motherhood and I wasn't experiencing, at least on a tangible level, in those moments where I was feeling like everything was hitting the fan all of the time and I just couldn't seem to figure it out. And, as a type A driven, high achieving woman, I was like I should be able to figure this out and I'm not. And it really came down to my definition of what excellence in motherhood was. So I walked into motherhood thinking that excellence was a very visible, tangible, measurable definition that could be seen in my motherhood, so, for example, that I would look a certain way as a mother, that my children would be and act a certain way. It was very performative, so very checkbox and list related, and I just thought, if I just get the right book, then I am just follow it like a recipe, then I will have an excellent home, I will have excellent children and, honestly, a lot of that came from an organization that my family was part of in my growing up experience and I won't go totally into it, but there were a lot of what I would call added truths to biblical truths about what a home and a wife and a mother was supposed to look like.

Shelley:

And so when I was thinking about excellence and what I wanted my home to look like, it really kind of started with the fruits of the spirit. That was kind of Galatians five was kind of where I landed to start with, and then obviously it led into Philippians four, which I know you talk a lot about on your podcast, where excellence is really determined as being the things that we think. And when I begin to look at that, I begin to say you know, I wake up every single day and my mind is a landmine of lies, of things that are not true about myself, about my home and my children. And so excellence for me started of really kind of unwiring a lot of that in my brain and replacing it with what was true of me, of my identity in Christ, of who I was, apart from being a mother, of a wife, of who I was just as a daughter of the King, and then the outflow of that was that things in my home began to change. So that really was the starting point of excellence for me was getting into God's word.

Shelley:

And I know if you're listening and you're an overwhelmed mom, you're probably thinking I don't even have time to get into God's word. And I get that 100%, because time is so important if you're a mother. It started as simple for me as doing little post-it notes on the kitchen sink with a scripture verse and just reading it over and over, and over and over, until that was what I thought of in my mind instead of the lies. So it was very small steps in the right direction over a long period of time. And then the excellence, the visible excellence, became more visible in my home and in my children, if that makes sense.

Leanne:

Yeah, that's beautiful. So I hear you saying that it really started with you first and your internal again definition of what excellence is and who you are in Christ, who, how the Lord sees you really is how you got to a place of feeling like you could be the mom that you wanted to be you and the Lord. I think that that is so good because I think we as moms get really into the task, that checklist, that day-to-day like oh, I got to do this and this and this and we forget the importance of our time with the Lord and how just incredible that really is. Shelly, I'd love to hear about if you have like a specific story or a lesson that you feel like you have learned that you think another mom would really benefit from hearing. That would just really bless her.

Shelley:

Yeah, I think that for the first five years of beginning kind of that redefinition of what excellence was, things felt very forward motion for me. My children were getting older and so I felt like I was coming a little bit out of the trench of the trenches, I like to say and defining excellence for myself in some ways became easier from a routine, from a rhythm standpoint. Prioritizing my time with the Lord felt easier. There was more margin and white space, et cetera, et cetera. But about a year ago, a year and a half ago or so, we began to move into the season of older kids and I remember my mom used to say you'll be completely physically exhausted with younger children, but as your children get older you will be emotionally exhausted. And I used to think, well, that's the silliest thing. Like I don't understand that. And about a year and a half ago I began to experience what that was like.

Shelley:

Um, and what I found for myself was that a lot of the routines of excellence that I had put up in my life and when I say routines I really mean practices, okay, cause excellence is really a practice every single day, in every single area, whether it's spiritual, physical, emotional excellence but those practices that I had set up for myself were encringed upon by the fact that my children were getting older, because they were requiring me at different times of the day, they were requiring me in a different way, especially emotionally, and I started feeling very depleted in a lot of areas and I at first I thought that it was from some outside tensions, and it actually wasn't. It was from some things that were shifting inside. So I told that to say that excellence is a continuum. It is not a destination, it is. It is not something where, if you just get your home in this, this and this and this order, if you just practice these habits, if you just do this as a, as a checklist, that you will be excellent, that your home will be excellent and you will never have to revisit these things. It is the same process as being transformed to be more like Jesus. It is a process, and just when you think that you have it down, then you need to shift things around.

Shelley:

And so, to be honest, I went through a season of kind of feeling a little bit like I was riding a bike for the first time when it came to excellence. It was almost like rewinding back to how it was when I first started this journey and feeling wobbly and feeling like I wasn't really showing up well in any area, that nothing was really being excellent, and the Lord, just in his gentleness and through a lot of wise counsel and through several different scenarios, really brought me to a place where the only energy I had was to show up in my spiritual life and for my children. That was about all the capacity there was and that was such a gift because it reminded me that, at the end of the day, if I show up for Jesus and then I show Jesus to my children, that is excellent. That is the definition of excellence and motherhood, and it took me back to the basics and I'm really, really thankful for it.

Leanne:

Mm-hmm, that is so refreshing to hear that, at the end of the day, show up for Jesus and show up for your children, for your family is beautiful and it's so simple is beautiful and it's so simple. We overcomplicate it so much and I love that you had that. That insight to recognize. I need to clear, I need to clear what's going on so that I can focus back on the home. And since you have done that, do you notice a change in your home? Like, is that tension still there? Is it manageable? Like, how does that feeling now?

Shelley:

Well, I think it depends on the day, leanne, if I'm being totally honest, because some days you know it's just that's just how it is.

Shelley:

It's not always going to be the same, but what I can tell you is I think that I have a much faster awareness of when I need to go back to the basics and when I'm allowing the things that are going on around me to really define my level of excellence, as opposed to allowing it to be between me and the Lord. And I think I think that's one encouragement that I would give any mom that's listening is understand that the level of excellence for you may look totally different than it does for someone else. And, as a mother, freeing yourself from the definition that other people are going to give you is one of the best things that can ever happen to you as a mother, because it frees you to be who God created and wired you, to be in your process of becoming more like Jesus, apart from what everyone else is doing. So I think that on the hard days is what is a real encouragement to my heart.

Leanne:

Taking away that comparison and just focusing on eyes on Jesus.

Shelley:

Yes, A hundred percent Eyes up.

Leanne:

I love that Um. Can you share what you feel has been the? If you could put it in like a few sentences what's the most rewarding part of being a mom so far?

Shelley:

Well, I think that I'm experiencing a lot of the rewards of planting seeds diligently when your kids are little, and what I mean by that is putting in place structures that are frameworks for them to be able to run on as they get older. And it takes so much work and energy when they are little, I get, I mean, I remember. But now that my children are getting older I can see the rewards of planting those seeds and them when they were little. So I'll give you a practical example.

Shelley:

One of the things that we did when our children were little is that we would establish like quiet time for them when they were no longer napping, so when we had moved from that season of napping to more like those early elementary years, establishing for them the ability to have some time away each day where they were quiet, not necessarily to sleep, but just to kind of reorient there and regulate their nervous systems.

Shelley:

And as our children have gotten older, we no longer require them to do that. But I find, especially my older two, my 11 and 13 year old daughters, that they are much more aware, especially at certain times of the month they're going through puberty that they need to take time away, and that is just a simple practice that Jesus showed us over and over and over in scripture right as his example of being away with the father. That I see now the benefit of that, showing them as they get older that there is benefit in having time away, whether you're spending it with your heavenly father or whether you're quietly reading book or whatever to regulate as a human being, and so that's been one of the most rewarding things is to see plant seeds early and there will be a harvest later and you are, in essence, teaching your children what it means to show up with excellence, giving them that opportunity to regulate and and put their focus back on their savior.

Leanne:

They're like you are. You are modeling that for yourself and for them. That is beautiful. I really love that. We also do a quiet time with my kids, and especially on Sundays we do two hours. Everyone goes in their own corner, and my husband and I as well. No screens just rest, and it is been amazing for our family. So definitely, definitely love that. You kind of touched on this already, but I'm wondering if you can just speak a little bit about how you stay motivated to show up with excellence when things are hard and when you just don't feel like it.

Shelley:

This is a really, really great question and, uh, this is one that, in different seasons, has been harder than in other seasons. I recently walked away from two more corporate type jobs and came back into the home, and it was easy in those seasons for me as a person to stay more routinely regulated with my habits of excellence. So waking up in the morning early, spending time with the Lord, taking care of my body and making sure that I was getting dressed every day, these things that helped me to be able to show up as the best version that I could for the things that God had called me to. When I stepped away from those things and those structures or quote unquote, accountabilities were not there anymore. Then it was on me of no one was standing over me or requiring me to do these things, and I needed to know the benefit of every single one of those practices so that I can sell myself every single day on why I was going to get up and spend time with the Lord, why I was going to take care of my body, why I was going to get dressed.

Shelley:

And please hear me say I did not do this perfectly. It actually was extremely messy for about six months extremely inconsistent, and there were definitely days where I did not hit the mark, but the beautiful thing is that, as a believer, I know that the mark has already been met for me. None of these things in visual, like performative things of excellence, none of these things makes me more excellent as a person, as a person, as a daughter of the King. I am excellent because of Jesus, yes, and so those things that I quote unquote do are because of who I already am. They are not because of who I am trying to be, if that makes sense Absolutely.

Shelley:

So it was always like tying it back to. The reason that I do this is because I am a daughter of the King and daughters of the King show up this way, they practice these things. Um so just reorienting kind of my mindset and my belief system around what I actually believe in and that over time has helped that. Um so it I don't really see it as being motivation or feeling. It really has nothing to do with that. It has everything to do with an identity of who I am.

Leanne:

Oh, that's beautiful because it's so much deeper, it's not surface level and like, oh, like, our feelings are not great. We were in an earlier episode and so that's so great to know that it's. When it's so deeply ingrained and rooted in who you are, it makes it, in an essence, a little bit easier to just show up. Um, I love that so much. Um, what are you most looking forward to in your next season? Like your, your oldest is hitting that. She's a teenager now. Like, what are you looking forward to in this next season of motherhood?

Shelley:

Well, I can tell you, if you don't have teenagers yet, get ready. It is so fun. It is so insanely fun, and I have two daughters who I really consider teenagers. My 11-year-old is almost a teenager, practically, because when you have younger kids, they become older anyway faster.

Shelley:

Um and so, just like the other night we were sitting in the car driving home from a trip, we ended up with our two oldest in the car by themselves, because the others were their grandparents which never happens and the girls wanted to watch a TV show. That was not something that our younger ones would watch, and I was excited for them to be able to watch a TV show. That was not something that our younger ones would watch, and I was excited for them to be able to watch it together. They were laughing together and bonding as older sisters, and it was a glimpse into what this next season is going to be like.

Shelley:

I'm excited for my daughter to drive. I'm excited to be able to watch her become an adult. That has been something that I have looked forward to, so I'm excited to be able to watch her become an adult. That has been something that I have looked forward to, so I'm excited about that. I'm excited about launching my kids and I know that that may sound like you know, strange as a mother, but I am excited about the people that God is making them to be and about what he's going to do in and through them as they leave my home, and so I really have so much anticipation for the next season of motherhood, and I know it's going to be hard and I'm I'm excited for it.

Leanne:

I, you know what. The thing I hear in what you're saying is just this mindset that you are have excitement and that is going to serve you in how you shepherd and guide them in that season. I think that our society has this dread for teenage years and by reframing that to excitement, like I can just hear it in your voice, I can, I can see it on your face, like you cannot wait, and what a gift that is to your girls and to your son too. You know that's that excitement is going to make the experience so fun for all of you and I just I love that. What an encouragement, um, and I'm excited for your girls too. So fun, um. So, shelly, how could listeners connect with you if they maybe had a follow-up question or just wanted some more of your wisdom? How can they connect with you?

Shelley:

Well, this is a really funny question. I thought about this, leanne, before you asked, because there was a season where I would have easily said connect with me on Instagram, go to my website when I was coaching, um, all these things. But I am in a different season now and so because of that, I'm not as active on social media. But you can find me on Instagram at Shelly C Tyson. I'm over there. I try to be active in stories like Monday through Friday, and then there will be a big gap and then I'll be back on. But I also have a weekly or bi-weekly as the case may be encourage me email that I send out just about life seasons, about parenting, marriage, what God's teaching me, and I always put a little Amazon link in there, like something fun that I find on Amazon, and so you can also grab that and get that in your inbox on a bi-weekly basis or so, so you can connect with me both of those ways.

Leanne:

Oh, that's so great. So my last question for you before we go this is a fun little question is if you could recommend one book to someone, what book would you choose?

Shelley:

Well, it probably would be the book that I'm reading currently, right now. Um, it is called practicing the way by John Mark Comer. It is called Practicing the Way by John Mark Comer. It is one of the best foundational books I've read in a long time about being a believer and what that means, and being an apprentice of Jesus and practicing loving him, practicing becoming more like him, what that doesn't look like, and it's been such a great read for me and a great reminder for me and also has been super, super helpful in conversations with my children about what it looks like to be an apprentice of Jesus, not just a Christian, not just someone who has all the right answers, but someone who is literally, practically every single day, walking out their faith and doing so in an authentic, open way, and it's just been a real encouragement. So that would be what I would probably recommend.

Leanne:

Awesome. I'm already adding it to cart. That's great. Great Love it, so so good. Well, shelly, thank you so much for joining me today, and this has been a very encouraging conversation for myself. I have some notes here. I hope that you, listening, were able to have some great takeaways as well. So thank you so much, shelley. I really appreciate you. Thank you. Lianne.