The things my children teach me…

…in no particular order.

I identify as a mother, haven’t even tried to not look like one or act like one for many years. I am comfortable with this space. All the mom stereotypes… I don’t really care. They are hilarious and strange and okay by me.

From my children have come some of my greatest moments of exhilaration and also my deepest moments of anguish. It is the price of love, a fiercer love than any other I have experienced. Nothing will change that, not distance or changes or decisions they make. As my friend Tina said this morning, “They will always be your babies, no matter how old they get.”

I can expand much further and rebound better than I thought I could. My husband showed me a meme today with a series of circles, the largest being 10 cm across. It simply said, “This is what 10 cm dilation looks like. Buy your mom something nice today.” I have accepted the fact that my body had to change and stretch drastically to give birth to my babies, and I waste no time pining for my teenaged shape. Sometimes I would like to return to the wide-eyed hopefulness of my first baby shower and just tell that girl, “This is going to stretch your very soul until you think you will die, but you won’t. You will become bigger, more, and it will be a beautiful thing that you have been so mercilessly expanded.”

I am a nurturer, and though I mostly practice my skills on the ones in my house, the nurturing includes people who are not my birth-children. In the Mother’s Day message at church, it was mentioned that you do not need to give birth in order to be a fruitful woman. In my own thoughts, the heart of femininity is bearing fruit to hand it out for the feeding of others. How ridiculous to turn all my grapes into shriveled raisins for storage in case I get hungry someday. To offer freely what I have, with no strings attached- it sounds noble, but oh, it is hard!

I read about a mother who coached her little ones that if they are ever lost, like at the zoo or in the store, they should look for a woman who has children with her to ask for help. I aspire to be one of those safe persons in our society, the ones who have time for another’s drama. It is the essence of motherhood.

I have had to face my humanity and brokenness repeatedly in the last twenty years of mothering. This is the best thing that my children have taught me, and it’s not because they are so horrible. It is because they came into the world needing quite a bit more than food, and as it turns out, I do not have all the resources they need. There is an elderly lady who comes to church, probably in her late 90’s, and she is full the of the fire of God. She declared, “You won’t do everything right in your parenting. God won’t let you.” It’s true. He wants to teach me about His resources. I have learned that I can come boldly to the throne of grace behind a locked bathroom door or flat on my face beside the bed, a beggar.

I find myself in over my head. And yet I embrace this. I signed up for it.

What do your children teach you?