Happy Mothers Day to ALLLLL the beautiful women who make the earth go round and give birth to it's inhabitants 👨👩👧👦🌎🌷!
It doesn't really matter when you read this post because, you can count most any day as 'mother's day' in some way. It might be, "mother's day... to take a nap!" Or "mother's day... to do 100 loads of laundry"... yay! Or "mother's day... of intercession". We can celebrate you and your amazingly, invaluable, high-calling of motherhood 'erryday!
I am taking this amazing, well-deserved Hallmark holiday to introduce my next series of blogs, "Becoming Mommy" that I will begin releasing after my current series on miscarriage, honoring the loss of our sweet heaven-baby, is complete. I hope you will be encouraged and track along!
HERE WE GOOOOO....
I didn't have the "birthin' hips", was too insecure to hold a crying baby and didn't know if I had what it took to be a good mom. My husband, being a natural-born-baby-person, was entirely prepared to "teach me" how to change a diaper, hold a baby and be a mom... but the day I birthed my firstborn, a mother was birthed in me! He laughs recalling how I began telling him how to do things with our baby!
He was able to lean back, and admire me blossom into motherhood, grow in confidence and strengthen me when I felt overwhelmed or weak. Becoming a mom was beautiful and I thought my heart would simply BURST from love, instead it grew and grew!
Though the nurturing, maternal instincts and desire to care for my helpless little cutie definitely kicked into gear, I desperately needed my husband's help with something else (in addition to carrying an increasingly heavy carseat 😂).
Literally overnight, my world changed. Spit-up, blowouts and crying interrupted my days. The demands of nap times, exhaustion, and nursing flooded my schedule. It was as if the only thing I could really commit to was caring for this needy little person (and sometimes myself... when my mom would come over 🛁).
The dishes piled up. My ministry commitments lessened. My laundry pile grew. And as I was swimming in the new waters of mommy-hood, a question began to surface in my soul...
"who am I?" and "what do I do with my life now?"
As humans we have a seemingly nagging propensity toward finding our worth and identity in what we DO. When normal life commitments and routines make a sudden shift - it gives room for us to re-evaluate our lives and selves and look for the answers to these important questions.
This is healthy, normal and helpful.... IF we are listening to the right voices and have nurturing, safe counsel and help. The sneaky, terrible thing is that it often blindsides the new mom (...or the freshly laid-off dad, or the college freshman, or the naive newlyweds, or the unprepared empty-nester, or the lonely tween thrust into puberty... get the idea?) and our enemy CAPITALIZES on it! More on that later.
This is where my superhero husband came in!
Remember I began by describing how Michael was so ready to help me become a mom with the practical side of things (which, thankfully, came quite naturally)? Well, his voice, along with my tribe of heaven-sent individuals (more on that later!) helped me navigate this unseen realm of emotions, questions and the lack-of-purpose-rut I felt stuck in.
If you have this whole Mommy-thing flawlessly down to a science, add your encouragement in the comments below so the rest of us mommas can benefit!
For the rest of us... new mommas, strugglin' mommas, discouraged mommas...
Here are some of the encouraging words and much-needed perspective I received... consider it as my Mothers Day Card to you! Take it personally and be encouraged!
Give Yourself Grace. Your expectations for what a "success" looks like needs to shift. If the only thing you do in a day is keep you and baby alive and fed, you have DONE YOUR JOB!!! Mission accomplished. Congratulations world, this momma has KILLED IT!!! Take the nap. Let the house get dirty. Pull back on the other commitments.
Be Kind to Yourself and your People. This piggy-backs right off the first one and flows into the ever-present need to tame our TONGUE! Don't blame your husband, lash out at your mom or call yourself names simply because you feel out of control. Lean on Jesus & what He says about you. Meditate on the Word and if in doubt, resort back to Grandma's wise mantra, "if you don't have anything nice to say... don't say anything at all!"
You're Going to Make It! Hormones, emotions, sleep-deprivation, and all the fun stuff that comes with birth are very real. It's normal to feel overwhelmed and not quite "yourself"... this is just a season and I promise, it will get better... this flows right into the first encouragement to give yourself grace!
Becoming a mom is not new or novel... mothers have always and will always exist.
A mom who walks in her God-given beauty, however, fully grabbing hold of the dignity, identity and authority that is her's in Christ... now that is something that shifts the course of history!
🌷Happy Mother's Day!🌷
Look for Part II in this series, Overcoming Fear, in a couple weeks!