To All Who Mother Motherless

There are a hundred ways to lose a mother. 

Cancer, car accidents, cocaine habits...

Depression, disability, distance...

My mother died when I was twelve. A man crossed the solid yellow lines and crashed her van onto the side of the road. Her loss is as much a part of me as the double helixes of DNA that make me curly headed and fair skinned.

I'm writing to you because I want you to know that you are welcome in this place and you are far from alone in the journey. I hear it from so many of you and I can see the tears that have trailed your cheeks stained. You carry a heavy weight because your mama couldn't bare fully the weight of motherhood. 

If I could see your soul it would likely look hollowed out, malnourished in all the motherless places. Years of living motherless can leave you hungry to know the curve of a mothers love, the way it can wrap itself around the bare places of your heart.

Some of you are like me. You lost your mama to circumstance or illness and you wish with all your heart that she could be here, by your side, a phone call away during those midnight feedings.
 
Others of you have mothers who made the choice to quit when you needed her most. She walked out and kept walking despite your cries and desperate need. I believe it all aches the same. No loss is more or less and the hurt, regardless of how it happened, can debilitate us. The ache can whisper into our hearts and minds that we are lacking in every way.

Let me cup your face in my hands and look deep in your eyes for a moment because there is something you deeply need to hear. It is something that I have deeply needed to hear.

Your ability to mother the children God has given you has nothing to do with how you were or were not mothered. 

I know it feels differently. I know in those moments when the baby is crying, the toddler is wailing, the teen slammed the door (again) and you disagree with your husband that it can seem the world is imploding and you're the one to blame because you weren't mothered well. I know sweet sister. I know that ache and I know the thousands of tears that you've cried because you thought you were getting it ALL wrong.

Let me whisper truth into your soul. That is a lie. 

God says He has given us everything we need for life and Godliness and that He will supply all your needs according to His riches. He is rich in grace for the motherless among us. He says once you were without hope but now He has given you a hope and future. He has placed you in a family.

You get to be the mama and you get to be a part of God's rewriting of the story.

Your past? The generations of women in your family that mothered with a limp? Women who struggled along and gave grief when they should have heaped grace? The cycle ends with you. 

There is a fire that burns bright for those of us who have lived motherless.

Motherless women have a passion unparalleled to mother well.

I know you feel it. You can be at a loss most of the time about the "how-to's" of motherhood but you rarely are at a loss about the gravity of your calling.

We are women who celebrate most bravely the big accomplishments and tiny victories of the everyday. We are mama bears who wrestle cubs into bed and read an extra story because we're utterly convinced it matters.  

In Christ we mother whole even with a hole in our hearts. That's the beauty of redemption. Redemption doesn't erase the scars it simply gives them meaning. It gives their story depth so that when we recount the tale to our sons and daughters we can share a different ending.

Motherhood begins long before the labor pains. We learn the lay of the land from the women before us but when we hold those precious ones to our chest our story takes on a life of it's own. Live that story in confident hope God will meet you in the middle and fill in all the gaps and cracks.

And if you're ever feeling alone in the midnight of motherhood just wave a hand. I'll be there and together we'll remember the truth. We are whole in Christ. Whole to mother fully though our own mothers failed us. Whole to risk failure to change the future.

Are you feeling the ache today? Leave your tears and hurts in the comments and we'll take it to Jesus together.

The Whole Truth

Sometimes you have to be bold and say it out loud. You have to say what happened to you or what you experienced even through blinked back tears and when you have no idea how it will come out.

Three weeks ago I miscarried our second child.

I’ll be honest, I’ve not wanted to be a blogger who wrote about having a miscarriage- not that anyone “wants” to have the experience and write about it. Please know that I am grateful for those of you who have written about that experience, but {and please hear the grace in this} I didn’t want to be that writer. It isn’t a story I wanted to tell.

My mom had miscarriages. She isn’t here to ask about them, but I do know that they were before she had my brother or myself. I’m blessed I have a healthy daughter a gloriously ordinary first pregnancy and no previous miscarriages, but I think that somewhere in my soul I knew that I would walk this road. Maybe I’m walking this road for someone else who is going to walk it behind me.

The first thing that I said to my husband when I realized that we were probably losing the baby was that I dreaded telling people. Most of our family knew about our impending addition and we’d slowly started sharing the news with an ever widening circle of friends. Some of you are hearing this for the first time and for that I am sorry. Grace?

It wasn’t that I was afraid of what people would say. I know that we are loved and that tenderness and sympathy would be in heavy supply from all. I’ve been scarred by tea and sympathy from losing too many in my life. I have an aversion to it. Kyle gently reminded me that I didn’t have to tell anyone.

I’d almost decided not too.

My reluctance to tell this part of my story has to do with my own struggle with grief. I’ve realized that I fear being the girl who lost her {fill in the blank}. Growing up I was the girl who lost her parents and this has reminded me that I still worry about that being the way people one dimensionally see me.

Truth be told I don’t have to sit here and write this story out for everyone who stumbles on my blog to read, but as I’ve mulled over this new part of my story I knew that it wouldn’t be authentic to hide it. I’m not afraid of the ugly pieces of my story because I know that those are not irredeemable pieces for God.

Let me say that I am okay. The recovery has been very manageable and we’ve been cared for well. Yes, it stinks that we lost a baby. I’ve sob-soaked a t-shirt or two of my husbands in recent weeks. I’m dealing with my emotions {alone time, Scripture, chocolate, girl time, good books, Zumba class and retail therapy help} and I’ve been shored up by a few sisters who have walked with me through this in the most tender way.

I’ve wrestled with the right emotions in the midst of it all. I was between 9-10 weeks when it happened so it was still early. My connection to the baby was not super strong at that point and so the loss doesn’t feel as great. In some ways I wish that it did because that is the way that I think I should feel, but don’t.

That was scary to write because that bumps up against all kinds of insecurity I harbor about being a good mom. Should I be more emotional? I did just lose a child. Will someone think that I don’t value life or personhood because my child was only 10 weeks old when I miscarried and I’m not overly distraught about what happened? These are questions that swirl as I type.

I’d say the biggest thing for me right now is the fears that are creeping around the edges of life as we think about the future. What ifs are a huge trigger for my anxiety and I’m having to press forward in letting that go and believing that all is grace whether we have another child or another miscarriage.

Sorry for being a serious Debbie-downer right before Mother’s Day. I tried to not hit “publish” but it felt unauthentic. Someone out there is walking this path right now and I hope that you can see me a few steps ahead waving and telling you that it is ok to not know how you feel and to keep walking any way.

Every woman who has carried a child, no matter how long or how short, knows that our children break parts of us off. They split us open and down the middle and we’re never quite the same once their lives have touched ours. Even if it is an ever so light touch.

Let’s be sad for a second together. Let the weight of it sink in. Let the tears fall free. Don’t fight it or question it. I promise to sit with you for as long as you need.

I don’t have anything revolutionary or mind-blowing to say about this experience. I’m still processing it and the half dozen other things that have blindsided us these past few weeks- April was a doozy of a month.

All I know is that I want to share in this space my real in every way. I’ve made a point to always do that and even though these aren’t the words I wanted to add to my story in April of 2014 they are evidently the ones that God wanted to add. Not the words of a cruel unfeeling God, but the words of a master storyteller honing His craft in my life for my good and His glory.

Thanks for cupping this story in your hands gently.

{Feel free to share your own miscarriage/loss stories in the comments. Whisper them in an email handmedowngrace(at)gmail(dot)com if you aren’t brave enough to say them out loud. I’d love to hear your sweet words of encouragement- keep it light and lovely though. I need some happy up in here.}

A bit of happy to add…

The giveaway for The Vintage Honey Shop teething necklace is still going on and I’d love for you to enter. Seriously, it would knock my socks off to give a piece of beauty to you. You. Yes, YOU! Go enter!

+ Mother’s Day, HELLO! Break out the breakfast in bed and day off of dishes!

Catch up on this weeks reads…

This week has been full of great posts:

Why We Can Say “Yes” In Our Mess {Kristen Welch’s Rhinestone Jesus is now available!}

Mother’s Day Redeemed {For all of the motherless daughters out there}

100 Way You Know You’re A Mom {A Guest Post by Lisa-Jo Baker!}

Learning to Share {+ a giveaway from The Vintage Honey Shop}

Your Story Isn't Over {Surprised by Motherhood Launch Day!}

I've been a birth doula for 5 years now and in that time I have held hands and hair through the wilds of labor, but today I'm calling myself a book doula because there is no book that I have cheered on more than this piece of beauty from Lisa-Jo Baker.

Mama friends, this book is for us. It is for all of us who share the story of having our hearts and lives wrung dry and filled full from raising littles. It is the gift you should put in every baby shower bag from here to eternity.

Here is a snapshot of my own motherhood journey and why I think Surprised by Motherhood: Everything I Never Expected About Being a Mom is a life-line of truth and hope to every woman who has ever mama-ed.           
When another car crossed the center line and slammed head on into my mother on a humid Carolina June evening I thought the story was over. I thought that my days of being a daughter had ended as abruptly as her life.

A little over three years before that night my father's heart had given up it's lifelong fight. I'd clung to my mother for the tether a child's heart needs. She had been my anchor when the storm had tossed all of us hard on the rocks. When my Dad's heart gave up my Mom's heart beat stronger and it found her on her knees in the wee small hours prayers, on beyond early morning drives to work to put food on the table, her journals full of Scripture and hope that kept us afloat when the world wanted to drown us.

There I was un-anchored and uncertain in the worst sort of way at the age of twelve. 

My untethered teen years found me wondering what it was like to be normal, to be like all the other girls butting hormones with their own mothers. I wish that someone would have warned me about how the grief would find it's way out through the cracks of a broken life in the most unexpected of places.

Fast forward a decade...It was early fall and I was piecing together handmade decorations for our tighter than tight wedding budget. I remember telling my sister-in-law over the phone, a motherless daughter herself, that I felt lost. That was one of the first times that grief snuck up on me. It blindsided me with the force of how much I missed her and the way it found me floundering and gasping for air.

Six years later and an ocean away from home in West Africa I found myself stretched body and soul and pregnant with our daughter. I was in total denial. Not here. Not now. I was the epitome of "surprised by motherhood".

It wasn't that I didn't want to have children. No, I never quite felt that way. I was convinced that I had been disqualified. By the time my first daughter was born I had been twenty years an orphan. Twenty years of being an outsider to the parent-child relationship.

Every question I ever had about my mom and mothering flooded my mind. I knew the mechanics of pregnancy and birth. I'd labored with women through the night as a birth doula holding hands, rubbing feet and nodding "Yes, you can!" to mamas exhausted and nearing the finish. It was everything after which terrified me. It was the knowing that birth is never the end and only just the beginning of the weary-wonderful ride of motherhood.

In the wee smalls of a January morning I bared down and my girl entered the world superwoman style with one hand over her head- a certain prophecy over this girl.This time I didn't pack my doula bag and get back in the car to make the drive home and collapse in my bed. This girl was my own flesh woven with DNA as thick as the Southern accents that run back a dozen generations in my family. She is a part of me and has rarely been a part from me since that day.

The surprises of motherhood began in a cement room where roosters crowed outside of our lappa curtained slat windows and nuns sang across the yard every morning, and they have continued every single day since.

Millie was born wide-eyed and got sent back from the nursery her first night for "disturbing the peace". She never slept. All the books and methods ever preached fell flat when tried out on Miss Millie. Her disregard for schedules and sleep brought me near the edge of lunacy. I've still not recovered entirely.

All the while God was breaking me and remaking me, teaching me what I had forgotten because I was so long an orphan. He places the orphans in families. We're programmed to think that means we get one as a child, but for me I've been placed in a family that is my own and I am the mother. Mine is a life come full circle.

Millie has dirty blond hair with a hint of curl at the back and brown eyes that take up half her head. At first glance she looks nothing like my mother. My mama had a mop of dark brown unbelievably tight curls and light blue eyes. But some days when Millie twirls and whirls around the room the light refracts and I catch a glimpse of my mama. I see her there and I know that eternity really is forever and that my mama's life and her story didn't end on the side of a road on a summer evening.

Whatever it is you think disqualifies you from motherhood- be it a failure, a loss, a shame, a grief so big it has seeped into every corner of life- let me say with your beautiful face cupped in my hands and with eyes locked, "Your story isn't over."

I'm so blessed to share bits of my story with you and my friend Lisa-Jo has written a book that is her story and battle cry of truth over the harder than hard moments of motherhood. I love this book like I love chocolate. <------{Click to tweet} Seriously ya'll, that means a whole lot coming from me. Says the girl that just polished off some brownies while writing this.

She wrote it for herself. She wrote it for us.

She wrote it to be the one to say our stories make us into mothers and even if motherhood doesn't initially fit like our favorite pair of jeans (even worse makes our favorite jeans obsolete) we can find our way to better, fuller, realer versions of ourselves.

Surprised by Motherhood: Everything I Never Expected About Being a Mom is a gem and that is why I want to invite you all to cheer Lisa-Jo on today by grabbing a copy of her book as it launches. She has labored long over this new baby of a book and today we all get to join with her in the joy of it all.

If you want a book that will wrap you in a superhero cape of courage to keep going in this motherhood journey then this is the one. It is filled with the Word and her own story from a woman who has such a gift with words and weaves stories like a cherished blanket. If you're like me your leisurely days of reading are gone, but I promise this book is not to be missed.

You can download a few chapters by going here, but I promise you'll want to read the whole thing. 

Watch the trailer with a box of tissues. Seriously, get the tissues.