Born a Mother

I was trying to remember my first Mother’s Day as a mother last year. Abigail would have been two months old, still young enough to count her age in weeks. Which means I would have been a two-month-old mother, still young enough to feel my weakness and joy like a pulse. I was undoubtedly wearing a milk-stained shirt, because everything I wore for months had to submit itself to the ritual of breastfeeding. I was probably still lining my mesh underwear with maxi-pads the size of a small country, because the wounds of childbirth had not quite turned into scars. The thing I am most sure of is that I was drunk on love and filled with an indescribable joy. 

I never pictured myself as a mother. When friends would talk about their dreams of pushing a little one around in a stroller, finger-painting with toddlers, dressing newborns in impossibly tiny outfits, I would smile friendly enough but remain silent. Those were not dreams in which I could see myself. I thought of children the way I think about climbing Everest or exploring the Arctic: fine for someone else, someone more adventurous, but not really for me. Maybe someday. 

A friend writes, “Giving birth is about more than just birthing a baby - you’re also birthing a mother.” When Abigail was born, I was born as her mother. Suddenly I could see it - the walks, the finger-painting, the impossibly tiny shoes. I could see my place in these dreams, see how I could instantly fall in love with her smell, her eyelashes, her perfect cheeks. I could see myself dancing with her to silly songs, laughing at her jokes, and framing her artwork. She was perfect, this perfect little girl with her own heart and voice and soul. I couldn’t believe she could have possibly come from me. And yet there we were, in the same world, her little body cradled in my weak arms. 

I do the work of motherhood imperfectly - I’ve been overwhelmed and frustrated and impatient, along with a thousand other sins. And yet I feel the Lord drawing nearer to me even in these moments, and it’s his nearness that is my good (Psalm 73.) I feel at home as a mother in a way I’ve never quite felt at home doing anything else in my life. 

There are times I wish I could go back and encourage her. Not the woman I was last year wearing a milk-stained shirt and maxi pad from the still-bleeding wound of childbirth, but the woman I was before ever giving birth to myself as a mother. I would tell her not to be so afraid. I would tell her there is more joy in this season than can even be explained. I would want her to hear the sound of Abigail’s laugh, the shape of her smile, the roundness of her tummy. Even before her first Mother’s Day, she would know she loves mothering.

Photo: Jenna L. Richman Photography

Divine Reading (Lectio Divina)

Originally published at Horizons Resources

For most of my life I have viewed a wide reading of Scripture as the best way to engage the Word of God. Whether that view was intentionally held or not, I failed many Bible-In-A-Year plans trying to attain the extra holiness in store for people who take in a lot of the Bible every day. 

Around this time last year, I was introduced to a new-to-me way of engaging with Scripture called Lectio Divina. Latin for “divine reading,” Lectio Divina is a series of movements to help the reader engage a passage in a deeper way. This is a practice of slow, meaningful reading and re-reading of a very small portion of Scripture, usually only a few verses. It’s asking questions and silently listening for their answers. It’s allowing the Spirit time and space to move in our hearts. 

While there’s certainly nothing wrong with reading large passages of Scripture each day or reading the Bible in a year (many people I love dearly, including my husband, do this and really benefit from it), Lectio Divina is something I’ve found to be another tool in my arsenal, another spiritual exercise if you will, something to be used to increase my enjoyment of God as I read his word. In the same way our bodies become stronger as we exercise them in different ways, so can our hearts and minds as we engage scripture in different ways. 

Building muscles - both physical and spiritual - is complementary in ways we often aren’t even aware of. For example, a person who does only bicep curls will soon plateau unless he also exercises other parts of the body. By adding other exercises to his routine - planks, squats, cardio - he can begin to improve again. The strength gained in his core by doing planks can help him lift heavier weights with his arms because his body is more stabilized. 

The same is true of our spiritual muscles. After practicing Lectio Divina, my day-to-day readings of larger passages of scripture take on a new depth, and I’m more apt to take note of words or phrases the Holy Spirit brings to mind as I’m reading. In the same way, reading more broadly gives my practice of Lectio Divina a fuller shape as I understand the context of a passage better and how that passage fits into the larger narrative of the Bible as a whole. Each spiritual “exercise” benefits the other. (Continue reading at horizonsresources.net…)

Longing for Home

A few days after we announced my pregnancy to the world, there was a For Sale sign stuck into the grass in our front yard. A man showed up to our house to take photos of the rooms, and those photos were uploaded on a house listing. Strangers I’ll never meet have stepped foot in the closet where my clothes hang, the bathroom where I first learned there was a baby in my belly, the kitchen where I learned how to bake bread.

My husband and I are renting this house, and soon we’ll pack up our things and try again to make a home somewhere else.

I shouldn’t be so sentimental about a rental house, but we made this place a home and had no intention of leaving it so quickly. There’s an unmistakable feeling of being uprooted, of having the rug pulled out from under our feet yet again.

When I imagined the next few years of my life, I always imagined them against the backdrop of this home. I planned how we would arrange the furniture to turn one of the rooms into a nursery - a comfy chair in the corner by the window, changing table against that wall, crib other there. I imagined bringing home the baby growing in my belly to the familiar white walls and beige carpet. I imagined more dinners with my husband in the kitchen, celebrating Christmas this year in the living room, and watching more movies with our friends sprawled out on the couches.

When I saw the For Sale sign stuck in our yard, I was angry, the kind of angry that makes your heart beat fast in your chest and your eyes well up with tears. I blamed my anger on the sign, an exclamation point at the end of dashed hope that maybe we could stay here a little longer. When I finally got quiet and honest with myself, I was really angry at God.

Every morning it seems I wake up with a list running through my mind full of unmet expectations. I expected more years with my husband before taking on the titles of both wife and mom. I expected my aunt and uncle to be in my life for decades longer. I expected my job to be fulfilling rather than frustrating. I expected pregnancy to be easier physically than it has turned out to be. And I expected to live in this home for years, saving pennies away to hopefully buy a home later when we felt ready.

It seems no corner of my life has been left untouched by suffering these days. And yes, I trust that the Lord is good and loving and sovereign over each of these events and yes, I know each of these things can foster a greater dependence on him, and yes, I know there are still good things, candles in the darkness. But those words are so much easier to say than to live into, and I still find myself waking up to painful reminders of unmet expectations every morning.

Last week I texted one of my best friends a long list of all the things going wrong, all the things happening and not happening, all the things I want to stop and the things I fear will never stop. At the end of it, I was expecting her to echo back to me my own shame but she didn’t. She said all the things I had mentioned were really hard, and I cried.

Every new wave of suffering kept knocking the breath out of me, but life carried on as normal. There was no break, no slowness to process all the things that were happening. There were still dishes to do and laundry to wash and hours to work and prenatal vitamins to take. I felt like I had to carry on as normal too, talking to friends the same way, working the same way, praying the same way. I never made space to acknowledge I am sad and angry and confused.

My friend acknowledged it for me, and I think the Lord’s comfort is like that too. He has been present, witnessing the pain of his children and weeping with us. He never asked me to pretend like everything was great.

Nothing has been fixed, and if I’m honest, I don’t even feel all that much better. I am still sad and angry and exhausted. Acknowledging pain doesn’t make it go away, but I think it is a step in a good direction. I found myself echoing the psalmist this morning and praying, “How long, O Lord?” because I want things to be different, easier. They’re not yet and they may never be, but it was an honest prayer and I think God is after our honesty.

I don’t know what house I will be living in in a few months. I don’t know where the crib will be set up or what door I’ll walk through when the baby inside me has made his or her entrance into the world. It’s a hard place to be. Even in that hardness, what I know is that my heart is ultimately longing for home, true home, and that longing will not go unmet.