I log on to my lap top and casually check the feeds; twitter, facebook, pinterest...the usual. They are littered with a million heart cries from a million different places in life and they tear stain my screen.
I've always had a gift to be able to see a person's heart behind their words. The way a smile can never quite cover up the rough edges of a life frayed and faltering. The way "fine" is rarely the truth about how any of us are ever doing.
It's the mama hearts that bleed right through the screen at me. The mama hearts that hold newborn babies with awe and angst. The toddler moms who cart babes on hip and by the hand out of the store screaming and wailing against the word "No." The moms of teens who, try as they might, can't sync the young people before their eyes with the babies they cradled not so very long ago.
I see you there wiping those tears and wondering why this motherhood thing is always so hard and no you are not crazy it is always so hard. The up all nights are not forever, but this motherhood and its weight most definitely is.
Might I offer words of warning to us all? Be careful mamas to listen to one another.
We all know about the rollercoaster of hormones and the wild ride that can be life with a newborn- the way that our lives turn invisible and our time is sucked into a {wonderfully hard and beautiful} black hole during those early weeks. It can feel like a mad rush to pour all kinds of encouragement on the new mama. We say things like, "This too shall pass" and "It gets better." Yes, true, but...maybe we just need a bit of solidarity with one another.
All the freshest encouragement can feel like pressure pushing on the back of an already overwhelmed mama especially if she is struggling to find the glow and joy of motherhood between the dimness of nightlights and crying babes.
Perhaps birth breathing is something that is meant to be continued on into motherhood? In through the nose, out through the mouth, with a bit of silent peace in between. Maybe the biggest thing that any of us need at any point is for another woman to look us in the eye and say,
"Yes, it is hard and it will never not be hard. It is meant to be hard...really hard."
I'm beginning to be afraid that we've sold each other a bag of lies about being a mama. It is glorious in all its messiness, but it is hard and that shouldn't be a surprise sprung on any new mama. It doesn't makes us bad mothers to say it out loud. We need not qualify it by saying "I love my children." Of course we do.
The love we have and the hard we feel can co-exist, but the lie that we are okay and the reality that most of them time we are struggling can't live in the same house together.
I am convinced that it is meant to be hard. I overheard a friend many years ago say that she didn't think she was ready to have a baby because she knew how selfish she was. She had a baby the next year. She'd probably say now that she had no idea how selfish she was. I know I would say that with hand raised.
Birth a mother does not make. It is the life that explodes into our lives and hearts and finds us giving more than we thought we had that pulls the mama out of every corner of our being.
When I say it is meant to be hard I mean that I think God meant motherhood for more than a means of care for tiny humans. I think He meant it for us, the mama ducks. God means motherhood to be the Gospel at work.
He means it to be the Gospel at work in our lives and spilling over and drenching our children. Satan knows this full well. If Eve had been a mama when that serpent slinked up to her I am certain he would've worked the mama guilt angle. That is how powerful a tool that is. That evil serpent has not ceased to use it against every daughter of Eve since Cain gasped life for the first time.
Motherhood is a constant battle to maintain Christ as our identity above all else when our job is so all consuming. That is hard. The hardest kind of hard in a world fallen so far.
Motherhood undoes the most organized woman on the planet. The glory is that Christ can put us back together better than new. Better than the old pre-mama self. The one that didn't even know how selfish she was. He revels in renewing our hearts.
I don't revel in the hard. I revel in hope.
Mamas, hear me. It is hard. Oh, so hard. It might get easier in the moment, but this motherhood thing is hard. Harder than hard. None of us need to hide behind the hard or duck behind a facade of "It's all good" when it certainly is not. Sometimes we need advice and sometimes we all need a hand, but what we all need more than anything is a bit more reality.
I don't need to see your perfect. I need to see your pieces.
The ones that are scattered in your sink and the ones that are scattered in your heart as God puts you back together better than new using the grand tool of motherhood.
The hope that follows the hard is this...Motherhood is hard. It's meant to be that way. But God...
But God...rich in mercy, bigger than colic, deeper than the pit of postpartum depression, more glorious than knock kneed, chubby legged toddlers, higher than the stack of dishes overflowing the sink, wider than the laundry piles, louder than a teenager's slamming door, more plentiful than day old juice filled sippy cups, closer than the babe slung tight against your heart, who from beginning to end has not tired in making you more like His Son is at work in you my sweet sister.
In you.
He is El Roi the Old Testament God who is our New Testament Hope that sees you in the here and now and is shaping you through your work of loving and raising little ones to be big hopeful children who have seen the Gospel written across your life, sometimes scrawled desperately across your life by God.
Hear me from thousands of miles away say that yes, it is hard, so hard for us all, but you are not alone in the hard stuff. I'm with you and God is for you.
A song for every mama...we're planting trees...the work is oh so hard, but the fruit that only God can bring is glorious!
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