“This is my story, this is my song!” A mother of two almost three, sometimes I yearn for the introduction chapters of my life narrative such as when I traveled and taught abroad in Thailand for eight months, six years ago. The pictures illustrate me skinner, blonder, and posing with the peace sign I internally felt. I learned “Mai Pen Rai” which roughly translates to “it is all right”. In application “mai pen rai” meant choosing
to live ready for random challenges like water, bending , yielding, trusting all is well and will be well.
In the six years following, I shifted into three more jobs, married, and gave birth to two beautiful boys (with a baby girl on the way); as well as lost a sister and two grandparents. Though I lost my inner peace from the external struggles and sometimes yearn to wander alone abroad again, I realized my time in Thailand, much like every other experience prepared me for this time- growing a family, raising my sons and soon daughter, this is it- I have arrived. No career, no exotic trip or profound accolade compares to stewarding those gifted to me by the King of Kings and Lord of LORDS.
However, motherhood pains resembles the sacrifice and trauma of military platoons on active duty. I honestly feel the effects of PTSD from giving birth (twice going on thrice), trying to sleep train babies and potty train toddlers (the never knowing when the late night crying out comes nor when pee or worst excrement damages the floor or yourself). Yet what a trial to teach the water way, as liquids both spilled and given by my littles surround me each day, to practice yielding and surrendering to each challenge bending and flowing.
Of course, the desire to move past the very needy stage of babies and toddlers into more independent kids and teens, sometimes overwhelms my tired and very pregnant body. Yet, the climax of the story occurs now in the present- for in a life you grow up, find love, raise a family, retire and die- with some financial success, vacation travel and/or other accomplishments such as inventing something, a plot twist but not the main conclusion. For our legacies, our love and our very lives lie in our children. So embrace this climax of character growth in the saga of motherhood.
So for all those called to, and gifted with motherhood in the thick of littles especially, recall:
"Children are a gift from the Lord; they are
a reward from him.”
-Psalm 127:4
"Children's children are a crown to the aged, and parents are the pride of their children.
-Proverbs 17:6
"At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?' And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom
of heaven.' "
-Matthew 18:1-3
Climb up and climax onwards dear mothers in the ecstasy of the challenge!
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