Five months ago I started this blog, and I finally feel at a place to return to it, at least for tonight. It might be that writing is slipping back into my life as a special and integral part of it, or it might just be that my toddler is asleep and my husband is out with my seven week old. Ah, the freedom of not being touched or needed for an hour...
My motherhood has taken on an entirely new dimension. I do not just have one child, one budding personality, one little girl who holds my heart in her hand and around whom my days revolve. Now my life is a great balancing act--and I am not just talking about how to carry two children down the stairs at once or how to carry a laundry basket with a baby carrier on my front--a constant juggling of needs, the need to nurse, the needs for new diapers, the need for hugs, the need for a "good job" and "you are beautiful". Some moments I want to run away from it all and escape, and other moments, usually following an emotional catastrophe, I find that my baby has weaseled himself into the baby carrier I wear for the fifth time that day, but that he is close and peaceful and mine, and I remember that my little girl is the most delightful person in the universe. This is good, I know in those moments, and one day I will long for this time again, when my baby boy's head is resting on my heart and my little girl is delighted by a cup of milk and my lap.
My husband told me, when I was breaking down over my unavailability to my daughter in the first couple of days of Edmund's life, that we were going to get to know Agnes in an entirely knew way. We were going to get to know her as a big sister and to witness this new development in her life. Such a wise man! I have been amazed and inspired by my daughter! Though I have been stuck nursing plenty of times when she has asked for help with a toy or dealt with a baby hanging from her mom hours a day or hardly had a moment with her mom without her crying brother in the background, her response to Edmund himself has been the most welcoming and loving possible. She has never shown any jealousy toward him but treated him immediately like he belonged. I am thankful to be witnessed to by my daughter, whose entire life has altered and who has been largely inconvenienced and who has responded with love.
God's grace is sufficient, I am learning... again. I am also learning it is not sufficient for the tomorrow that lives in my head. His grace is sufficient right now. I am so helpless, and a baby who does not nap well, or hardly at all without me wearing him, and who loves to wait until Mommy has snuggled back in bed to decide he wasn't done nursing, is a baby who brings his mother to her knees in complete and utter surrender, not because she feels so trusting towards her Creator and Savior, but because she is one inch away from trading her faith, that seems ridiculous in the moment, for despair that begs to be allowed dominion in her heart. I remember the days when I felt like I could conquer anything for the Lord and opened my hands with the joyful prayer to God... anything for You! This is the anything He asks, and it is scary how close I come sometimes to rescinding that prayer of self-gift, because I am learning what self-gift feels like. Of course it is painful and sometimes I feel so empty, but then I am filled again. Christ provides. I finally drag myself out of bed after trying to ignore for a few minutes that both children have woken up, and I find my little girl in her crib smiling... "Hi!" and sometimes she starts jumping back and forth across her bed. Laughter. This is grace to me--the help given by God to do what I could otherwise not do. And He provides with renewed fervor in my heart to serve Him, a scripture verse that makes me feel understood, an encouraging word from my husband. He always gives the strength needed, when needed, and how it is needed.
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