On Doing It All & Achieving Our Dreams
NOTE: This post was originally published at Key Lime Digital Designs. If you look at our Facebook profile you’ll see that who we are is summed up in eight simple words, “We’re just three moms who love to sing!”
While this may be true, there is obviously a lot more to the three of us, and there is nothing simple about our lives. For starters, we all have great husbands, who are our biggest fans and supporters. But besides three husbands, there are also 13 kids between us! That’s a total of 19 people in the Mercy River “family”…and it gets challenging. Between rehearsals, doing homework, making dinner, carpooling to dance, making time for our husbands, and just everyday busy-ness, life can get quite crazy.
Every time we perform we get asked, “How do you do it all?” and our answer is always the same, “We don’t!” Something always has to give. Sometimes our houses are a mess, our laundry piles are up to the ceiling, and sometimes our husbands have to make dinner. Sometimes we have to turn down a girls-night-out or give up extra hobbies to perform with Mercy River or to spend time with our families. It just isn’t possible to “do it all!” (Or if it is…we just haven’t learned how yet.)
But…we HAVE learned how to “make it work.” For example, we take our kids with us to rehearsals (see our Youtube video for an example of the chaos). We set limitations on how much “Mercy River-ing” we do each month. And we’ve learned to be patient with ourselves even though our vans might smell like old socks, or we have 7,385 non-printed pictures sitting on our computers, or our two year old doesn’t have “I Am a Child of God” memorized.
We’ve learned that if you are following the spirit as it prompts you day by day–being where (and who) God wants you to be–it isn’t “all” you can do, and it might not be the “best” you can do, but it is enough.
So, how did a blonde (Brooke), a brunette (Whitney), and an auburn (Soni), who didn’t know each other, become Mercy River? Simply put, all three of us were singing in the Jenny Phillips choir when Jenny had the idea of putting a three-girl group together. She asked each of us if we wanted to do it, and of course we were excited about the opportunity. Little did we know what was in store for us! Although we have been able to work with incredible producers and musicians, meet many amazing speakers at Time Out For Women (as well as hundreds of wonderful fans), we’ve also had our own share of humbling experiences. The kind of humbling experiences that make you want to crawl in a hole and hide. We actually have our own “Top 10 Embarrassing Mercy River Moments”…which we will keep to ourselves.
Through all the ups and downs of Mercy River, the three of us have become best friends. Such good friends, in fact, that we are often asked if we are sisters. In these moments we just look at each other and smile, knowing that we sure could be. But perhaps more important than friendship, we’ve gained the knowledge that “with God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37). The song “With Him We Can” on our new album is really our expression of this truth. Through our experiences as mothers, wives, friends, and members of Mercy River, we have for sure learned of our own limitations. But we’ve also learned of the amazing things that God can do if we let Him. If there is anything we want to share through our music and mothering, it is this eternal truth.