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From the first thought of knowing you wanted to be a parent to the very moment of living it, it is a journey filled with highs and lows. When I was younger, I grew up with two older brothers so boys are all I’ve ever known. Before I even knew how babies happened, I prayed to be a mother with three boys. I grew up at the ball fields, we had our own backyard full sized little league baseball field that my brothers built with a well built underground dugout that we definitely needed, and on the basketball court. I was immersed into all things boys from the very beginning.
While life took its twists and turns with what felt like a roller coaster through college, marrying my junior high sweetheart, graduate school and into my career. I was so focused on work, serving and helping others that I almost lost my way to motherhood. It’s wild how we can fall straight into the busy that we lose sight of what we once dreamed and prayed to have. When friends and family were planning baby showers, I was taking call and running from one operating room to the next in between consults and traumas. At one point I thought my career had clouded my path to motherhood, but as I look back now I think it was God preparing my way straight into motherhood. I think God must have planned it for me to work that hard and that many hours before I could be ready for motherhood. There’s definitely no comparing exhaustion here, but I was trained for the exhaustion that awaited me into motherhood long nights. Call nights trained me to be asleep but never reaching that deep sleep. Something I do not recommend, but it was the path that prepared me for what was to come. Late night rounds, checking on patients and leaning into listening more than talking, it was all part of the process forming me into the motherhood mindset. After six years of long day and long nights working as a physician assistant, I found myself unable to keep the pace up that I once could. God met me where I was and walked me through learning to say no to something that I thought was everything I wanted and what I once thought must be my purpose in life. Thankfully God knows best. He met me in the late nights, in the operating room, the hallways of the hospitals, within conversations with patients and lonely meals alone in the cafeteria struggling to follow His way while ignoring what was the real calling He had created me for. He redirected my path into something that was so much more my speed.
It was all part of the becoming to motherhood that I still didn’t see coming at the time. God was working on my broken pieces within me so He could reveal the pieces He had for me while He put me back stronger, one piece at a time. The saying no to work and the yes to moving with Matt’s job was the first step. I knew my full-time work mode was going to shift and my no to work and yes to myself and Matt was God walking me towards Him and His plan. I had to go through the lessons, the medical training, the beauty in the chaos, the serving others, the dying to myself so I could be the person that God wanted me to be as a mother when His timing came about. I see it all so clearly now.
It took a lot of prayer, much patience, surrender and unlearning the pace that I had been running in since I was eighteen years old to uncover and unfold all the pieces that God clearly planned out for me, even if I didn’t understand it all happening to me and around me. Nothing can stop the power of God and His well laid out plans He has for us.
He mentally, physically and spiritually took me out of my comfort zone, had us saying yes to moves that moved us away from everyone we knew – things we didn’t even understand, much less know how to explain. God opened doors and shut doors that lead me to Honduras to serve others and unknowingly to me, He was revealing the love for motherhood that He had knit within me from the beginning. It was always there, but the knitting had gotten tangled up and knotted. God slowly piece-by-piece softened my heart and untangled the knotted knitting that transformed my soul to cling to Him, His way and not my own. The moment that it all made sense to me, like God was taking the blindfold off my eyes, was when I was standing in an open field lined with patients there to see us. There were babies, children and mothers that all needed medical help. This was what was important. There were moms that you could see so much pain in their eyes for their children to get the help they needed and when we listened to them and prayed for them, their souls lit up right before our eyes. It was like watching God light up within their deepest parts as we listened to them, we saw them and by the grace of God, we were able to help them. It hit me, in that open field with the mountains staring back at me that I felt God’s grace and calling on my life. It was motherhood all along. The medical side of it all was just meant to help prepare me, but it was never meant to be my purpose.
I walked into that week wanting to be there to serve others and what God walked me through while I was there was something that could only be the work of the Holy Spirit. Motherhood was at the top of my focus landing back in the US, walking off that plane towards Matt. I saw dreams of motherhood again. I journaled about future children and that joy for motherhood that I had lost along the way through my career and fast paced yes, yes, yes. I had been so tangled up and focused within myself that the knitting was tightly wound up, but was clearly not too difficult for God to untangle. His power was at work within me and even though I had lost my way and gotten distracted from what He had once knit within my framework, He was within reach and clearly at work. My dream to be a mother of three boys was back in its right place. Within a month of returning from that mission trip, God reassured me motherhood was my purpose. He was busy working out the details and I could sense the timing was all His.
The first clue I had that God was knitting and forming newness within me was within the first month of our pregnancy. Our weimaraner Sammy, would always rest beside me on the bed, but never on my stomach. Within the first month of our first pregnancy his head rested on my stomach every chance he got. It’s wild how dogs just know. Sammy was the reason I knew to check even before I missed my monthly cycle. I took a test and confirmed, God had prepared me and had me in the place of peace that He knew I needed to be before I could carry a baby within my womb. He was in every detail. I thought I knew His closeness before becoming pregnant, but to feel the working of a joyful miracle happening deep within your womb with the stretching and preparing of your entire system to be strong enough to deliver a newborn baby, that proximity to Christ was all a new beginning for me.
“For You formed my innermost parts; You knit me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks and pray to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it well.” Psalm 139:13-14
The nine months of preparation could have never been enough to prepare me for the the joy God had formed within me. It took every ounce of unraveling of myself, to stretch the deepest parts of my soul to be ready for this love that God had planned for us. Any fear that I may have had about motherhood was gone and it all planted me firmly into a peaceful mindset that God was teaching me how to better understand His love for us. Through motherhood God revealed Himself in ways I can’t find words for. Through the love of experiencing life being removed from my womb and seeing first hand, the first deep breath from the lungs that God knitted together within me. There is no closer proximity to God than that. That is motherhood. That is love and God had allowed me to be a tiny piece of that miracle He performed within me.
The miracle of life, the process in which it all unfolded and the journey that God walked me through to find myself again and more importantly to feel His love, His breath, His closeness and His truth was all wrapped up within our first newborn. Up until this point, I had read the truth and believed, but this was the experience that I was able to fully feel the oneness with God that He knew I needed more than anything this world could ever offer me.
Motherhood changes everything. We must become who God created us to be before we can fully feel His oneness through the miracle of becoming a mom. His life, His death and His resurrection became so much clearer to me within the nine months of carrying our first child and the delivery was vividly detailed with dreams I had once prayed for as a child.
I’ve never lost sight of God since having our first born and through another nine months and another delivery being able to experience the same, but different healthy miracle all wrapped up into the newness and the promises from God. My understanding of His love just gets more engrained within my soul when I didn’t feel like it was possible to get any more clear. The oneness and the clarity of His love abounds within the experience of pregnancy and even through pregnancy loss.
We’ve experienced both sides of seeing new life come to, and feeling the signs of new life within slowly becoming no more. There’s unwritten and unsaid beauty in that, too. God tells us, through Paul, in Romans that “though we must face the sufferings of this present time (R8.18),” that God is able to make even those sufferings work together for our good and His good. (Romans 8.28) In an unclear but transparent way that is far beyond my understanding, I know God was fully in the loss we had to go through because the all-knowing knows best and works all things for our good. And as we live, suffer and learn through all the twists and turns of life on earth, God on His timeline, is conforming us to the image of His son (R8.29), Jesus.
The loss, the unknown causes, the what-ifs, the four year journey to one more, He was in it. His presence never left and I never stopped running towards Him. I knew the further from Him meant more confusion, less peace, and lies I could easily find myself getting knotted up in and that would never lead me to that oneness I had already experienced with our Father in Heaven. He was the only way. The pace was set and the journey to deeper oneness with God was my focus.
With the years of no on a stick, I knew God had one more in the works for us. I prayed for one more. I realigned my heart with His way through the waiting. I cleared my brain from all the noise of what my hormones and body could handle. I wasn’t giving up because I knew my desire to have one more wasn’t all just a desire of mine, but it was God’s desire He put within me. I knew He wouldn’t give up on me so I wouldn’t give up on whatever I needed for number three. God doesn’t lead us to these strong desires and feelings just to leave us there. He sees us through and it may look completely different from our own dreams, but what we learn on the way towards it, no matter the circumstances brings us closer to God and that is always worth it. With the nos of the medical world, the nos of the pregnancy stick and the nos of my own body not physically taking to experiencing life within, I stayed the course with prayer and watched closely to all things that I ate and chemicals that I put on my body. I was the healthiest mentally, physically and spiritually than I had ever been while mothering the two gifts God had already gifted us with. As God prepared me for one more go at experiencing the beauty of pregnancy, with vomiting and low energy both being part of the process that came with God’s creating and knitting work within me, I was molded and stretched, both physically and spiritually, while our third pregnancy was underway. I knew I was living in God’s plan for our lives and I didn’t want to miss any of it.
We made it half way and the gender was ready to be revealed. I never once thought it was a girl. My prayers that I had prayed were for a healthy baby, no gender specified, but I never wavered from the dream I dreamed of when I was a young girl growing up with two big brothers. Our last baby, was a third baby boy. The pregnancy again was the same, but different. The experience was beautiful and much calmer the third round. The unknowns were still circulating as they do with any event in life, but God’s presence was in every detail and He was always confirming He was in control.
The gift of motherhood/ parenthood is transformative, it’s beautiful, it’s chaos, it can be traumatic, it’s full of unknowns, it’s scary at times, but all these emotions and feelings lead you back to the One. The One that creates and holds the plan, sees the plan through and carries us in the plan. Similar to parenthood, we will physically hold our children, do what we can to see their plans through, support their own dreams and carry them while pointing them back to God in heaven, when they lose their way. We are the first line examples of God’s love for our children He has given us. We are the ambassadors, the disciples for God and are to teach and train our children in the WAY they should go. To pray to God for our children, to trust God’s plan for their lives and to live as He has called us to live. This is parenthood.
Parenting is a gift. No matter how you experience it and no matter what it looks like, you are in the position of parenthood for reasons far beyond yourself. Through tiny feet, or tiny paws experiencing the gift of new life is a reflection of the love our Father in Heaven has for all of us.
“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matthew 6:33
“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Psalm 46.1