If You Turn 'Mom' Upside Down, It Says WOW!!!

God made me a mom and I’m so glad and grateful and, sometimes . . . even all these eleven plus years later . . .  alarmed. 


This job?   This permanent role?  This relentless responsibility?


It’s Just.  So.  BIG.


Carrying life and then caring for life for their whole life and mine.


The sleepless nights never end.


I held them in my belly for all those months and in my arms for what felt like years, but it’s the heart that does the heavy lifting every second of every day of every week forever.  And the heart, though it beats strong and constant, it breaks easy and often.  It swells with each milestone they reach, the fullness of love, joy, and pride overflowing as I stand in awe and witness their growth, only to shatter with the realization that every act of independence they take is just another good-bye.


Motherhood is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. 


It’s also the most extraordinary.


So I’ll stay up all night if I have to . . . for their whole life and mine.  The heart will ache and the heart will break.  But more than anything, it will beat with the certainty that motherhood is an incredible blessing from God, and next to Jesus, Charlie and Libby are the greatest gifts I’ll ever know.

Happy Mother’s Day sweet friends!  I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend celebrating the greatest, most challenging and complicated and wondrous and exhilarating job in the entire world!!!

Happy Mother's Day

It’s only been ten years since I became a mother, but in that most significant decade of my life – the one where every word and deed became about someone else – in that most demanding and magnificent and beautiful decade of my life, what I’ve learned is that motherhood is often about loss. 

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.

It was the most precious, perfect word I’d ever heard.  A word I dreamt of hearing for so long . . . since childhood really, when I watched and learned and knew . . . I want that.  I want to hold and cherish and  teach and adore. I want to mold and train and carry and cuddle. 

It wasn’t his first word.  It won’t be his last.  And he’s said it more times than I could possibly count in the last nine years. 

But at that moment, when he looked up at me with those chubby little cheeks and those pale blue eyes and those full, pink lips, and he said the word I’d been longing to hear for days and weeks and months and a lifetime . . .

It was my dream come true.  It was an answered prayer.  It was the fulfillment of a desire so deep I couldn’t remember when it first became the hope of my soul.  It was the most precious, perfect word I’d ever heard. 

“Mama?”

Yes.  Yes, son.  I am your mama. 

It is the most important title I will ever have, the most difficult job I will ever perform, the most terrifying, exhilarating, heart-wrenching experience I will ever know.  And next to Christ, it is the single greatest gift He’s ever given me.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mamas!!!