motherhood – rhythms of grace

We are almost three weeks in to my little one’s life, and everyone wants to know:

How are you?

And as I have tried to answer that question for myself, all I can honestly say is:

Exhausted

Overwhelmed

Depressed

Anxious

But those are not the things people want to hear. Those are not the things I am supposed to say when we have just been given the biggest blessing of a sweet baby boy.

Don’t get me wrong–I love the little guy more than my very own life. And that’s what makes it so damn hard to feel the things I’m feeling. Every time I look at him a flood of guilt washes over me for feeling this way.

To be honest, I feel like my life is over. Or at least, my life as I knew it. All the freedom and independence I had has been stripped away and my days are now relegated to feeding, changing diapers, sleeping, and repeating in an endless, crazy-making cycle. I am at my baby’s mercy. Any semblance of a schedule is gone–planning my days is nearly impossible now and simple things like keeping the house clean or going out for a walk are now incredibly difficult. On top of that, the sleep deprivation and postpartum hormones contrive together to ensure I can’t process any of this in a normal state of mind. What is this thing called motherhood? It’s so much harder than I ever could have expected or imagined. No books or classes can prepare you for this.

My heart is grieving the loss of what was. When things were easier and I could come and go as I please. When I didn’t have a tiny human who depended on me for survival, while all I can do is try to survive myself. When I could make a schedule. When I was in control.

And I realize that’s what this is all about. That’s what it’s always about: control.

I want to be in control of my own life. I want my will to be done. My way. And this baby was not my will. This was not my plan. And yet here I am, responsible for this precious little life, and as always, I have a choice. I can either keep wishing things were different, or I can accept that this is the charge God has given me. This is the gift God has given me. Often His gifts don’t feel like gifts, until we look back and see how He used them to change us. To make us more like Himself. I can’t say I have that perspective yet, but I’ve seen Him do it in the past with the hardest of my circumstances, so I know He can do it again.

Motherhood is an endless giving of self. It is a death to self. I have such a newfound respect for all the mamas out there, and hope I can be half as good as them as I figure this all out. But for now I’m still in the grieving process, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean I don’t love my son. It doesn’t make me a bad mother. These feelings are normal. And I’m allowing myself to feel them right now, despite what the world wants to see. Despite what other moms portray on Instagram. I’m bringing these thoughts and feelings to God, and we’re working through them together. I’m taking it one day, one moment, at a time, and trusting that it’s going to get better.

It’s funny how God chooses things for our lives we never planned on. And all of a sudden we are asked to step into roles we never thought we would be stepping into, or at least not at this moment in time.

For me right now, that’s motherhood.

This was not our plan. My husband and I didn’t want kids until years down the road (my husband admittedly a few years more than me). We wanted to have our first blissful honeymoon years of marriage together, just the two of us. We wanted to be financially stable with a dog and a house and a yard before a little screaming baby came along. We had our goals and our visions and our ideas about what this whole thing was supposed to look like.

And then, four months into marriage, I was three days late. And I thought it was no big deal until my little app told me it was time to take a pregnancy test. So first thing on that cool November morning I slipped out of our apartment to run to Safeway and ask an uncomfortable teenager grab me the First Response test out of the locked cabinet.

You can probably imagine how the story goes from there. We were shocked. We didn’t know how to handle the news– we both felt a mixture of devastation and joy (the latter more so for me than him). We had just begun to reach a comfortable rhythm in our new marriage, and now this was going to throw everything off.

We were not ready for a kid. I was not ready for a kid.

We headed up to my husband’s parents house later that morning to do early Thanksgiving with them. We were freaking out. We decided not to tell them yet, since we still couldn’t even really process what was happening. The last time we had seen his parents we told them I was going to start grad school. They asked me questions about grad school and I played along, even though both my husband and I knew this was not an option anymore. Not now.

The weekend was a blur. In fact, the past six months have been a blur. There have been so many painful and joyful moments in the process of growing a baby, but throughout this pregnancy, one lingering question permeates my thoughts: will I be a good mother?

Who am I to raise a child? Who I am to take on this enormous responsibility of raising a human being?

We don’t have the dog yet, so I don’t even know my skills in dog-momming. We skipped straight to what feels like the highest stakes, and while I am assured that God is going to take care of us and we’ll be okay, the doubts can still creep in. And I start to wonder if I’m qualified for this huge responsibility (and blessing) He’s giving me.

What if my health issues get in the way of my mothering? What if I get postpartum depression and can’t take care of him? What if he has emotional or cognitive problems? What if… what if… what if?!

But WHAT IF God is good? What if He is trustworthy and He knows what He is doing? What if what I see as an accident was His perfect plan for my life all along? What if the plan we had concocted for us would not have been nearly as rewarding and fulfilling as His plan for us?

God didn’t ask our permission to give us this child. But He has sustained this baby boy for the past six months in a way that I can only attribute to Him. Despite all the odds against him with my health issues, he has been growing steadily and fearlessly. He truly is a little miracle. If God has taken care of my baby this well so far, I know I have nothing to worry about on the other side of the womb.

No amount of books, parenting classes, or high-end baby products will make me a good mother. I will be a good mother because God has chosen me to be a mother. He qualifies me, and if I cling to Him, He will sustain me throughout motherhood. I know I will have a million and one moments where I have absolutely no idea what to do, but in those moments I know I can rely on Him for help and trust that it’s okay to not know.

Whatever you feel unqualified in– a job, a sport, a relationship– know that if you are in that role, then you are qualified. It is not a mistake. You were given a responsibility and you can either always feel like you’re not good enough and undeserving of it, or you can trust that you are where you are supposed to be and live fully into it. You will not be perfect and you will make many mistakes, but that doesn’t disqualify you.

There will be many times in life we have to step into shoes we don’t feel big enough to fill. And those are the best moments of faith–do we trust God enough to help us fill them? These are the opportunities to learn what we are truly capable of and who we might become. But if we back away out of fear we will never see all that potential come to fruition.

I’m not ready to be a mother, but this baby needs me to be. And there are people in your life who need you to step up in your role, whether or not you feel ready. You will be amazed what God will do when you just say yes.