A Crowded Bed

 “We were together. I forget the rest.” (Walt Whitman)

You never know that the most special moments of your life are special. The moments you think are going to be the special ones…they’re never as big as you make them out to be in your head. The best moments of your life are the ones you almost blink right past. They are so small and simple and brief that they seem more like a passing thought than a memory worth cherishing.

But those moments—the ones you don’t even think to slow down during and cherish or take a picture of—are the ones you find yourself smiling about randomly in the middle of the day. They’re the moments you wake up to in the middle of the night and can’t stop thinking about. They are the moments you wish afterwards you had a photograph of, but ultimately know that the photograph of it painted on your heart is so much better. Those moments are the truly glorious moments of our life.

This morning my alarm startled me awake at 6:45 a.m. I let myself sleep an extra 15 minutes and I lay in bed knowing it would be a push to get to work on time because of that decision. Sound asleep on my chest with her arms dangling at my sides was my 15-pound, 7-month old baby girl. Just inches away was the rather rotund rump of my chocolate lab. And to my right, my husband lay breathing through congested nostrils from a cold he’d been fighting off all week.  

After carefully sliding my daughter off my chest and onto the open space next to us in bed, I managed to get up without disturbing anyone. As I pulled my robe on and begin shuffling towards the bathroom, a tiny sliver of light slipping through the top of the window curtains spotlighted the scene in front of me.

Jumbled together beautifully in our king-sized bed, was my whole world: my husband of five years, the tiny human who made me a mother, and the dog who is my very best friend. It was a comical sight and instantly reminded me of the scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory of Charlie’s four grandparents all laying together in the same giant bed. It certainly was a crowded bed and one that most people would shake their heads at. But for me, it was the crowded nature of my bed in that moment that made me pause for a few seconds and just smile.   

In that crowded bed was the fulfillment of so many hopes and dreams…some I distinctly recall praying for in the darker and lonelier moments of my life…and some that I think only God alone knew that I needed.

Those three precious souls in my bed have shaped my life in irreversible ways. They have challenged me, inspired me, loved me, and saved me. In a world full of so many uncertainties and so much darkness, they have grounded me, turned me towards the light, and shifted my focus.

I used to worry about so many things in my life and the lives of those around me. But now I just get up in the morning and look at my crowded bed and I know that those three lives are all that really matter. Everything else is just noise. If I have their presence and love in my life, I know that all the other details and chaos will be sorted out eventually.     

Motherhood

 “Behold…your mother.”

Those three words—among the last spoken by Jesus on the cross—were all I could think of in that moment. I had just taken my first shower in four days. My first shower as a newly christened mother. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror of my hospital room, I took in the dark circles under my eyes and my swollen breasts. My stomach, cradled by mesh underwear, still bore the rounded resemblance of pregnancy, yet felt still and hollow for the first time in months. It was the first time I’d seen myself in four days. I recognized myself and yet I didn’t at the same time. I knew I was a mother, but I felt a far cry from the holy and venerable mother at Calvary. But somehow those last words spoken by Jesus about his mother kept echoing in my mind.

Flashback to Christmas Eve, a little over eight months prior.

“How amazing would it be if we just made a baby on the night we celebrate the birth of Jesus?” I remember saying to my husband. Just 23 days later, those two pink lines slowly emerged on the pregnancy test and I felt everything in my universe shift.

In the weeks and months that followed I often found myself thinking about Mary. I thought about the Annunciation when the angel Gabriel delivered the news to her that she would conceive and bear a son. Mary must have felt the way all moms-to-be feel—anxious, excited, and hopeful.

When Christians think about the Annunciation, they think of Mary’s profound “Yes” in that moment. A “yes” to God’s plan despite any reservations she had or plans of her own for the future. And from that moment, she laid down her life, her body, her plans, and her fears because she trusted so fully in God’s will.

Every woman, myself included, finds themselves in that same position when they first discover they are pregnant. Whether the pregnancy was planned or not, whether the woman is elated at the news or terrified, there is still a moment when she chooses to say “yes” to moving forward with the new calling placed upon her. And in that moment, we are forever bonded to Mary and inclined to look to her as the eternal testament to motherhood.

Throughout my pregnancy, I kept Mary’s trust and optimism in God in mind as I navigated God’s developing plan for me. As I stood in that hospital bathroom though just days after finally bringing my child into the world, I realized that Mary actually made two profound “Yes’s.” There was the one at the Annunciation we all know about, but perhaps the even grander one was made as she stood at the base of the cross in the final moments of her son’s life. That yes, that most difficult and inconceivable yes by Mary, is the one that has filled my thoughts for the past 216 days of being a mother.

I am already well aware that motherhood brings immense challenges and requires endless sacrifice. From the moment your child takes their first breath outside of your body, a mother’s job is to protect them, nurture them, love them, and guide them. But along the way we as mothers fail to do all those things at some point…either by our own failings as a parent or most likely, because of the nature of the mortal world we have brought our children into.  

As I lay in the hospital bed during the first days of my daughter’s life, I couldn’t allow myself to sleep. I just lay there holding her and trying to memorize every detail of her tiny form. I looked at her eyes and knew that they would one day shed tears I wouldn’t be able to stop. I looked at her lips that will one day form words of love and devotion to a person who will not share them back. Her knees and elbows will get scraped up. Her stamina, emotionally and physically, will be tested and drained. Her tiny fingers will someday wear a ring symbolizing her love and devotion to another. Her arms will someday hold a tiny child of her own. In every part of her I looked at, I knew there would be a story, a challenge, and a blessing someday. And I knew I would need to be her mother through all of it.

After bringing my daughter home from the hospital, I suffered through six hellacious weeks of feeding issues with her. From feeding syringes and nipple shields to weekly lactation consultations, it almost broke me. There were times that even the patient and encouraging lactation nurse looked at me with eyes that told me I should just give up. But I remained stubbornly committed to coming out the other side knowing that if we both persevered together, we could get her to successfully nurse and thrive physically. And that is exactly what happened.  

What those first six weeks taught me is that while motherhood is indeed hard, the only thing you ever really must do is just show up and try and never stop believing in yourself or your child.

Now seven months into motherhood with my first Easter as a mother only three days away—I am once again reminded of Mother Mary and the “Yes” she made during her son’s passion. I used to wonder if Mary had wanted to shield her eyes or run away while her son was being flogged, spit on, ridiculed, and nailed to a cross. I used to wonder how she could stand there and watch her son—her most precious gift from God—broken and slowly killed right in front of her. Why did Jesus’ disciples flee in those final hours while Mary stood there until the end?

But now I know. Every mother knows. The child you made from scratch…the child God entrusted to only you…the child who knows what your heart sounds like from the inside…that child is forever bonded to you and you are forever bonded to them. No matter what challenges motherhood brings, no matter what my child does or who she grows up to be, no matter how many times I fail or feel like running, I know that I will endure. I know I will stay. I know I will show up and give my very best to my child. Because there isn’t an option not to. God blessed me with a daughter to call my own in the same way that he called me to be his daughter. God has never walked away from me in any of my difficult moments so I can’t ever walk away from the mother he has called me to be.

Motherhood requires women to be the Mary of the Annunciation. But more importantly, it requires us to be the Mary at the foot of the cross. Because you can’t only say yes to the wonder and awe of receiving a child without committing to also saying yes to the sacrifice and suffering that comes with loving that child despite everything…through everything…until the end.