Letter to the Woman Who Wants My Life

I wrote the following letter to an actual woman in my life.  She and I have had many conversations over the last few weeks about her longing for a baby.  I've shared many thoughts that she finds helpful in her attempt to wait patiently without succumbing to depression, but ultimately, I can't fix this struggle for her.  It's a battle she will face repeatedly, as we all do, and wrestle with on her own and find her own way through it.  But my heart goes out to her.  I was in her shoes for 10 years of waiting and wanting a baby.  I want to try to ease her burden as much as I can. I communicate my heart best through writing, so I put these words to paper for her and for all the women in her shoes I've talked to over the last 10 years.

I also wrote it for myself.  I wrote it to help me remember not to look back with longing to my former life without children, or look forward to my future life when they are grown, but to live in the present moment, fully thankful, fully joyful, fully fulfilled. This truth applies to every person, in every situation, in all walks of life.

Dear Friend, Sister, Colleague, and Woman passing me in Walmart,

You see me and you desire what I have.  I'm not going to lie.  My life is blessed.  It's not wrong to desire what I have.  I have two adorable little girls who offer joy every day, whether I see it and enjoy it or not.  I want you to have what I have.  Children are a delight.  My life is charming in so many ways.  I have a roof over my head, food on my table and three people in my household who love me, not to mention your love for me and the love I feel from at least a hundred friends around the world.

You see me and desire what I have, and it's hard for you to grasp why my life is so challenging for me at times. You can't fathom why I would have any reason to curl up in a ball on the closet floor occasionally and cry my heart out just exactly like you do occasionally.

You see me and desire what I have, so I'm going to try to paint a better picture of exactly what it is I have.....

I am 150% thankful for this life and the babies in it.  I wouldn't change a thing. The reason I am agonized, at times, is because I have a high standard for wanting to live my life to the best of my ability and do a good job with what I have been given. I want to fully enjoy my babies while they are little before it's too late and I don't want to waste a minute.  It stresses me out every time a well meaning stranger says in passing, "Enjoy every minute... they grow up too fast."  I do have many glorious moments of enjoying them. But it's just not humanly possible for every moment to feel glorious. Many times the exhaustion is overwhelming and it's not possible to fully appreciate the babies in those moments. This reality is a grief to me, but nothing can be done about it. This is the plight of motherhood. The act of being a mother is primarily a sacrificial gift of love. Love for the children you are raising and love for all the people who will be blessed by them. God's primary purpose in giving us children is not for personal gratification. However, for mothers who are blessed with wisdom and vision, those mothers can see that it is more blessed to give than to receive. This is the truth that can sustain us in the many, many hard moments. Yes, there are many.

Yet, fortunately, there are also many moments of sheer delight and joy and personal fulfillment in the act of being a mother. It's an added bonus.

I'm an idealist, so I have unrealistic expectations that tell me that if I am doing everything correct, and am the best mother I can be, all moments will feel glorious and wonderful at all times. This is just not true. I know you are an idealist too, so I know you are likely to face this same challenge when you become a mother.

In those moments when things are HARD, I feel guilty because they are hard. I make it EVEN MORE HARD on myself by thinking it's my fault and if I was just a better mother, this would be easier.  Certainly there are times when I make things harder than they need to be with my shortcomings. But there are plenty of times when I have the right attitude and I'm doing everything right and it is still just plain HARD.

When we are in a season of infertility or when we are intentionally waiting to have children, many of us women look at mothers with babies and we want their life, not because we are eager to sacrifice our lives for others, but because we think their life would be more fun than the life we are currently living. And when we hear that those mothers are struggling, we think that they must not be grateful enough for what they have. I admit, certainly there's the occasional ungrateful mother out there, but I highly suspect that most mothers are like me..... SO grateful that they want to do the best job possible and they are beating themselves up trying to do just that. And if you're a good mom, you are going to do the same thing when it's your turn.

So try to stop beating yourself up now, thinking your life isn't full enough now. Try to see your life now and your future life raising babies, not as two separate lives, but as one life.  If babies are in your future, you are already making sacrifices for those babies right now and preparing yourself to be a better mother when they come.  The life experiences you are living now are preparing you for whatever unique challenges you will face in your own private walk as a mother. If you get used to and embrace sacrifice now, it won't be as rude an awakening when sacrifice is an unavoidable reality during motherhood.

So please continue to dream, continue to look forward to the arrival of a baby.  Don't shut your emotions off to protect yourself from the pain of waiting, as I did.  Keep longing, keep desiring, keep waiting so that when your dreams finally do come true, you will be open, ready and excited to receive.  But wait with more awareness of what lies ahead, both the joy and the heartache.  Enjoy your current season of life so that you don't look back and feel you wasted it by pining away for the future.  I have to do the same thing right now.  I have to discipline my mind regularly, telling it to stay in the present moment and not pine away for a future of grown children that will come all too quickly.  If you learn to stay in the present moment now, you'll be better prepared to stay in the present moment and enjoy as much as possible when your glorious babies do come.

This truth applies to every person, in all situations, in all walks of life.

Infertility, Motherhood, Humility, Suffering, Joy

I lay outside in the grass today, during my baby's nap time, reading another chapter in a book about motherhood and as I read, I had a light bulb moment and I want to share it with you.

It is the following words from Sarah Mae in her book Desperate that grabbed my attention...

"I have no foundation in homemaking or baby-raising.  I only babysat maybe three or four times..... I never wanted to babysit because I didn't like it; I found it boring.  Entertaining other people's children was not my idea of a good time."

As I read those words, I found myself realizing there was a time in my life when I would have read those words and felt smug because I LOVED entertaining other people's children.  I was blessed with a foundation in homemaking and baby-raising because of a mother and grandmother who made it look like a joy.  My heart should have been humble, knowing my love of children was a gift given to me, not something that came from being a naturally wonderful person.  But did I fully understand that at 22 years old?  No.  I would have read the words of that author and secretly congratulated myself because I thought I was better than her.  I wouldn't have voiced this, but I would have thought it.  Don't we all have secret smug thoughts we would never voice?

Now, at 35, I can relate to her.  Why?  Because ten years of infertility gave me plenty of time away from children and I learned to love all the time I had for myself.  There was a season of about 5 years when I no longer wanted to babysit.  During that season, entertaining other people's children was no longer my idea of a good time either.

I do love entertaining my 10 month old baby now, and her little friends, most of the time.  The love of children has returned to me.  It came rushing back with overwhelming love for my new baby.  But because of that other season of life, I can relate to the author.  And that's when it hit me; this is yet another reason God allowed those years of infertility.  If I had not gone through that season, I would never have seen that side of my heart;  my ability to be so selfish, that it was no longer fun to play with the most adorable creatures on earth!

It's always a great relief to see myself more clearly, to see how imperfect I am and to be able to relate to other imperfect people when they admit their weakness and failures.  I'm a much happier person now, at 35, than I was at 22.  It's not fun to be proud.  It's not fun to think I'm better than others.  That is a burden of loneliness I don't need.  The more time goes by, the more I realize I can relate to every person on this planet.  Given the right set of circumstances, there is no amount of evil too great that I could not be tempted.  The more I embrace this truth, the freer I am.  Free to love others on their worst days.  Free to enjoy the fact that God loves ME, on my worst days.

I know God had many reasons for allowing infertility to be part of my story, but if the above lesson was the only reason, it would have been worth it.

I hate the reality of suffering.  I don't have an answer for every perversion and every awful thing that exists.  I watched a deer die today.  Another car hit it and I drove up seconds later.  The deer lay in the road, heaving, wide eyed, trying to breathe.  We all stood around, wondering what to do.  Eventually the deer stopped moving.  She was gone.  I don't have an answer for why stuff like that happens.  But I've seen enough good come from pain to continue to trust God in those moments when I don't know the reason or purpose for the awful.

I know I would never see myself clearly if I didn't go through trials.  Every trial has revealed more of myself and stripped away burdens I didn't need to be carrying.  Every trial has left me happier than I was before.

Becoming Like Grandma

After a 3 month silence, I have returned to you.  When I write these posts, I envision us all gathered round in a circle, sitting in the grass, with a forest behind us, warm cups of coffee or tea in our hands, like some sort of hippy gathering, as we share our stories.  I guess I had to get up and leave the circle for a while.  I needed time to grieve the passing of my grandmother.  This is the first truly painful loss I've ever experienced, and I'm learning that I handle grief with silence.

Grandma was.....

well, nothing I could say could sum it up or feel right to me.  Furthermore, to write a tribute to her would be to say that she is gone.  It would feel like I am trying to tie up something that is not finished.  I do believe she is still alive, just on the other side of a great curtain and that I will see her again one day.  So instead of writing one big epic post about how much she means to me, (because she means a great deal) perhaps her influence and memories will appear occasionally in my writings for the rest of my life.

Like me, Grandma was a homemaker.  Perhaps it is because she made this lifestyle look so desirable that I chose this path.

Homemaking covers many topics.  We could discuss so many things.  We could discuss our move into a house with a yard and a fence and all the joys of building my new nest.  But we'll save that for another day.  Today I want to talk about motherhood again.

It's really no surprise to me that the topic breaking my silence is the topic of motherhood.  Truly, it is currently my favorite subject.  It consumes nearly every waking minute of my life right now and I'm even on duty in my sleep!  A nine month old is an all consuming joy.

Yesterday a friend wrote and reminded me that it is OK to admit that motherhood is hard.  I needed to be reminded.

I knew this in the beginning when my baby was a newborn.  It's just so obvious how hard it is and most people don't try to do more than is reasonable at that point.  We are all given a pass when the baby is only two weeks old.  It's later, when things get a little easier and our capacity increases, and we get carried away and then crash and then feel lost because we no longer have any idea where our new limitations are.

I'm in that stage where my baby is sleeping a little longer and I'm finally getting a decent night's sleep.  (Not an amazing night's sleep, but a decent night's sleep.)  I assumed this meant I would immediately start feeling better and well rested for the first time in ten months.  Not the case!  Apparently one or two normal nights of sleep is not enough to heal ten months of sleep deprivation.  No, it actually is making me feel worse for a little while, my body craving MORE, MORE, MORE.  In a way, it was easier to run on insufficient sleep.  The body simply shuts down the call for sleep and functions without it for a season.  Reawaken that beast and watch out! 

I've never heard mothers talk about this stage, but apparently I'm in a season of recovery and it doesn't happen overnight.

To make it more complicated, sometime in the past month I was bit by the bug that says I need to accomplish MORE than simply raising a child.  What a joy killer.  To raise a child is an all-consuming task. Joyful, yet all consuming.  I know it is all consuming and yet I have to be reminded.  Why do I quickly forget?

Maybe every mother has a tendency to forget?  Maybe all Americans try to see how much they can accomplish?  Like it's a badge of our value as humans?  Is this why people keep passing me in the street saying, "they grow up so fast!  Enjoy it!"  As well-meaning as this is, I wish they would stop.  I am keenly aware that Samantha is growing fast and soon she will grow up and be gone.  It's a painful thought.  If I think about it too much, it will ruin the beauty of the moment.  Trying too hard to enjoy something can, in itself, rob any possibility of enjoying it.  On the other hand, by not trying hard enough, we can also miss enjoyment, so I can't fault those ladies for their mantra.  It's just that I'm the mother who needs to be reminded that she will be a BETTER MOTHER if she spends time away from her baby occasionally.  I'm the one wanting to spend every minute with her, kissing her and enjoying her, not wanting to miss a minute of her short time with me, but at the same time CRAVING, NEEDING time alone and having a hard time taking it.  The one exception is when she is with her Daddy.  I have no problem walking away and not looking back and not thinking about her when I leave her with him.  I am at complete peace in those times because I know she is having a blast and he is having a blast and he and I are so bonded, when she is with him, I feel she is still with me.  Anyone who has a marriage like this is blessed.  But I digress.  The point is, I need to take time away from my greatest joy occasionally, so I can continue to enjoy her.

It's ok to say that motherhood is hard. It's even good and necessary to admit it.  But it's way more fun to talk about how amazing and wonderful motherhood is.  The joy makes all the hard worth it.  At 9 months old, it's just now getting really fun.  It has been fun, but it's getting even more fun.  Like sitting on the kitchen floor together every morning, sharing a bowl of oatmeal from the same spoon.  Or popping bubbles in the kiddie pool out back.  Or listening to Hakuna Matata from the Lion King seven times in a row just so we can bop our heads and hands to the music.  These things are the heart of homemaking.  We stay home so we can do these things together.  That is what Grandma taught me.

Yesterday my Mom asked if I remembered the time we visited the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream factory... the time we all nearly wet our pants laughing because Grandma got slobbered on by a cow as she tried to help us kids feed the cows in the Ben and Jerry's pasture.  The amazing bit is that she hated all things farm related.  She grew up on a farm and wanted nothing to do with it.  Yet she did it for us.  She was always a good sport.  Willing, in her 60's to ride a thrill ride with me, a 10 year old, when the circus came to town.  Speaking of the circus, she always made sure my sister and I each got our OWN cotton candy when she was buying.  An incredible luxury.  But again, I digress.  I only vaguely remember the incident at Ben and Jerry's, but it illustrates what I do remember about her.  She was always on the floor with us, doing things in our world on our level, yet at the same time, raising us up, inspiring us to join her on her level, in her world.  Come to think of it, isn't that what Christ did for us on the cross and the Holy Spirit continues to do for us every day.  He comes down to our level and enters our world to raise us up with Him to Divine Glory. 

Whether Grandma knew it or not, she was imitating Christ for us.  And this is the heart of homemaking; to imitate Christ every day.  Many of us have heard this over and over in Sunday school;  the goal in every area of life is to imitate Christ.  Yet Grandma made it look like a joy instead of a burden.  She did it without broadcasting that this was the purpose of her actions.  Indeed, it is only dawning on me now how successful she was at things others read book after book and blog after blog, seeking to become.  Perhaps, sometimes, in trying too hard, we miss the whole thing.  She wasn't into reading Christian self-help books.  For her, simply presenting a sincere heart, a willingness to serve and a humble spirit, was enough to make her legendary in the eyes of all who knew her.

I seek to be like her, even now, when she is no longer a phone call away, but separated from me by a Holy curtain.  I hope to see her again one day.  In the meantime, I will continue to eat oatmeal on the kitchen floor with my daughter, like she would have done.