You lose your body first. It
begins to feel all wrong and look completely different and defy everything you once
believed about what it must mean to carry another human being inside of you.
You shop for maternity clothes and feel
the flutters and you can’t imagine ever being happier, while deep within,
things are changing that can never be reversed.
The miracle of life, of God creating a son or daughter who bears His
very image, has taken over. Your body
has done just what God meant it to, and it will never be the same.
A pregnancy goes by and then, that very image of God, that precious son
or daughter arrives in a rush of fear and pain and exhaustion and the most complete
wonder and jubilation you’ve ever known. And the loss continues. He opens his eyes just for a moment and
looks so intently into yours that you’re certain he sees all the way to your
soul. His tiny hand wraps around your
finger and his lips meet your skin and your heart is lost forever. It enters him and becomes him and you know
without a doubt that it will never again beat without the knowledge that all is
okay with him.
Within days, your body and heart now wholly given over, you lose the
rest of yourself. You were once a daughter,
a teacher, a wife, a friend. Now, the
days and nights run together with the relentless responsibilities and you don’t
think you’ll ever be anything again except his mother. The one who feeds him. The one who holds him and rocks him and can’t
stop staring at his precious, perfect face. The
one who gives up everything else to pour herself into the helpless image of God
who never stops needing.
Days become weeks, and in the middle of a dark, endless night you
realize not only have you lost yourself, you’ve lost your husband. Not completely and not forever. You simply understand there is another source
of his adoration and his cup runs over with the joy of it, and you’re glad for
that. You’re grateful he has accepted
the call of fatherhood with such enthusiasm.
Yet, you know a part of your husband now belongs to his son, and while
you’re glad for that, you feel the loss, and it stings.
The loss doesn’t end there. You
lose sleep worrying about him. You lose energy
trying to keep up with him. You lose confidence
trying to understand him. You lose patience
trying to teach him. You lose your faith
when he’s sad or hurt or flailing in all his imperfections. You lose your pride as you watch your own mistakes
pile up so high you can’t see through them. You lose your mind trying to make all his
dreams come true.
The losses pile up one after the next as the weeks become months and
years and all you can think about is how you keep losing time with him and
conversations with him and opportunities to influence him and . . . him.
He’s meant to go.
I’m meant to
let him.
There is so much delight and pleasure and enjoyment in the blessing of motherhood. His voice, his smile, his laugh, the way he
breaths when he’s sleeping. The elation motherhood
brings comes suddenly, and frequently, filling me with so much joy it’s hard to
contain. The happiness I receive from
being a mother has existed as the focus of parenting from the very beginning,
and I imagine it always will. Still . .
. underneath that constant joy, the loss remains. Motherhood is often about loss.
Motherhood is mostly . . . about love.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mamas out there – may the love of watching them grow always overshadow the loss of watching them go.
