In honor of my very best friend and sister in law who become a mother herself mere days ago
Welcome to motherhood….
The journey that begins differently, each birth story as unique as the child we bring home. Each story stamped with the reminder that no two of us are the same. Each story like a tale of a personal war we survive, a day in the trenches, in a battle we were never really prepared for. Whether it starts in a delivery room, an OR, or an orphanage it’s a beautiful tale.
Welcome to motherhood…
Where you listen even when you sleep, where you reveal in first smiles, and breathe in the smell of baby shampoo like a long lost friend. Where the love you experience teaches you more about God than the many years in youth group or Sundays spent at church. Where all the sudden you are only half a person and the other half lies sleeping in your arms.
Welcome to motherhood…
The job with the worst hours, no pay, and very few vacation days. Yet it’s breath taking, life giving, and soul searching even on the hardest days. Its awe inspiring, confusing, and requires many a desperate prayer. It’s a journey where you reach the destination all along the way. Where you keep moving, keep breathing, and keep praying that you have what it takes. Where melt downs are common and freedom feels lost yet life feels so full. Where you ache when your baby aches, rock them to sleep singing when they spike their first fever, and smile through tears the first time they tell you they love you.
Welcome to motherhood…
Where we never really have it together, we weep and ache to do right by our babes while maintaining some shred of ourself then we release them into the world that seems to want to steal their innocence at the first bus stop. We are only half the equation, only half of the story, and how we want to be the best half we can be. We long to know we can shed our humanness when we hold another’s life in our very hands but the real test of our love is leaning into the one who created them. We love best when we beg for their souls on behalf of a gracious God. We love them well when we realize the real saving comes from the creator. We hold our hands open and embrace the mess of a life that raising kids is. We embrace that we have no real answers just a very personal God. We accept that our best efforts might be snuffed out from a cold world but all hope is never lost.
Welcome to motherhood…
The hours of labor, years of waiting, or total surprise that marked the start line of something so beautiful it’s hard to wrap words around it. So we wrap arms around flesh and blood and pray God never asks us to let go. We thought the real test of our strength was in the journey to the child in our arms but that really seems to just be the beginning. The real labor, I’m told, never actually ends. It comes in waves and seasons and in different ebbs and flows of life. From dirty diapers and 3 am wake up calls to tear filled conversations over a daughters broken heart, a lost job, or a family crisis. The real mothering never fully ceases.
Becky Combs - Well said. Having raised our kids to adulthood..we still love & intercede on their behalf. Thank you!