Its 6:00 am. I've been awake since about 5:00 because Noah was up to eat. Sometimes after I feed him, I'll get on my phone for a few minutes just listening to make sure he doesn't cough on spit up or anything. This morning, my news feed on Facebook broke my heart. I saw moms in all different walks of life, struggling, hurting, and broken. All kinds of thoughts and feelings swirled around in my mind and heart, and I just couldn't turn them off. So here I am on the computer sitting in the dark while my baby sleeps in his crib and my husband in bed, because I need to get some of these thoughts out. I hope they speak to somebody. And bear with me if they are not cohesive.
Being a mom is amazing and its hard. Its the tension of being in control and having no control. Its being enough and at the same time, not being enough. It's loving somebody more than life itself but knowing that its not your love that gives that child life. Its being mommy to the child God gave you and yet knowing that even your child does not truly belong to you. Its doing all you can to give your child nourishment and health, but knowing that it is God who sustains them. It is the responsibility to do everything and yet the ability to do nothing. It is learning to live in the tension. The tension that God saw fit to allow.
And we are all walking this same road of mommy-hood. It doesn't matter if you have been a mom for 25 years or 25 minutes. If your child is 30 years old or if your child is 30 days in your womb. We have this in common: we are moms. The love we feel for our child is different and we understand. Its raw, unconditional, aching love. Love that would drive us to do anything for our kids. Love that makes feeling sick every day for three or more months of pregnancy worth it. Love that keeps us up all night long with a crying newborn even though we are desperate for rest. Love that moves us to sacrifice more than we ever have before in our life. Love that will keep us up at night waiting to know our teenagers are safely home. Love that we will make us forget our own dreams to make their dreams come true. Love that drives us to the Throne of God over and over and over again. Loves that causes us to feel deeply.
We feel joy more overwhelmingly. And pain as well. And fear. And yes, we know that God is in control and we know he has a plan. But those emotions run deep because being mommy opens a whole new level of depth in our hearts.
And even though we are all walking this same road, we are often walking it alone. We are afraid to walk with other moms and we are afraid to let other moms walk with us. And we desperately want to walk with each other. We know we need each other, deeply. But sometimes its uncomfortable. We argue over things like what is okay to eat during pregnancy, tummy sleeping or back sleeping, breastfeeding or bottle feeding, cereal for baby or no cereal for baby, to vaccinate on schedule or to pick and choose or to not vaccinate at all, to sleep train or not to sleep train, to homeschool or public school. We show each other the research and try to prove our point. We want to prove that we have made the right decisions. But we forget the most important thing: we are all moms who love our children deeply and we are all walking in this tension of mommy-hood together. We have control to make these decisions and we have no control at all. We all feel the weight of our decisions deeper and heavier than ever before--deeper than we even should, sometimes.
But we are scared and uncomfortable. We don't know how to walk in the trenches together. We don't know how to support each other when the going gets really tough. What do you say to the mommy who just lost her sweet baby she never met, and yours is smiling right at you? How do you support the new mommy who desperately wants breastfeeding to get easier and it just doesn't, but it worked out just fine for you? How do you support the mom who has chosen not to vaccinate and therefore, puts your child at higher risk? How do you support the mom who makes you feel selfish because you have chosen not to vaccinate?
How do we learn to walk this road together? We learn to be okay with not always being comfortable, and we have to be okay not always being "right." We don't always have the right words to say, but when things are really hard, there are no right words to say anyways. We don't need each other to make our struggles better and we don't always need to agree. We just need each other. We need to know we are not alone. We need to be okay feeling each others pain, even when its uncomfortable. We need to know that even when we would do things differently, we all understand the deep love and responsibility we feel. Even when we are going through completely different struggles and making different decisions, we understand on some level because we are all moms. And we can get beyond ourselves, our opinions, and our discomfort to see each other. To really see each other.
So we won't always have the right words to say. We won't always agree with the decisions we make. We won't all have the same joys and the same heartaches. But we are all moms. And we need to walk this road together, in love. We have to learn to live in the tension together. We are enough but we are not enough. We have to bring each other to our Savior. We have to stand in the gap and pray for one another, because being mommy is the hardest thing we will probably ever do. And none of us can go it alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment