The Refining Fires of Motherhood

Motherhood has completely taken me out of my comfort zone. I think God designed it to--as part of the sanctifying nature of parenting and family life that rips us out of our cozy armchairs of selfishness.

It all started when I got pregnant on our honeymoon and had to start seeing an obstetrician (If I'd known better back then, I would have looked for a midwife!). Suddenly painfully shy and modest old me faced pelvic exams, poking, prodding, and the prospect of a male doctor and who knows how many other medical personel gazing with (professional) interest at pieces of me that I'd sought all my life to cover up! Oh my!

Then, when the baby was born, for the first time in my life I could not get more than a few hours of sleep at a time. And he was like no baby I'd ever held before. Whereas when I was not a mother, I could hold and coddle and quiet just about any baby with no trouble, my own baby--the one that I grew in my very own body--seemed to want nothing to do with sleep and quiet. He was a colicky screamer. I fell apart completely. Frightened my family, made my husband worry that he'd made a mistake picking me. I shattered into a million pieces.

God put me back together again.

As the second baby was born and my boys started to grow, there was another area in which God used them to knock out selfishness. For a long time, I wanted to control everything. If I could just keep the floors clean, if I could just keep sticky jam off the table, peanut butter out of thier hair. If I could only get them to nap at the same time, every day, and sleep 8 hours at night. If I could keep the boys out of the mud after a full day of rain, and keep them quiet and happy inside (I know, I know, impossible!).

If I could only do these things, my life would have some semblance of order and I'd be OK. But I had to recognize that if I wanted a pristine house and rigid schedule, I should never have married, let alone had children. And I don't just have children. I have two boys. Testosterone abounds, and therefore, so does mess and noise. They even sleep noisily--my little lawnmowers rustling around all night in bed.