Happy Wednesday!
I was in choir all through High School. Instead of a traditional accompanist, our choir director recruited the help of student pianists. I naively thought that my 2 years of piano lessons back in elementary school qualified me for this prestigious role, so I enlisted myself to not only help the choir learn the song, but to also accompany them on the night of the performance. I was able to fool everyone until the night of the show. I am not sure if it was originally my fault or the fault of the singers which first brought the song to an abrupt halt, but it was definitely my repeated fumbling over the keys that made us restart… not once, not twice, but three times. Honestly my palms feel a little sweaty just thinking about it.
I’m not sure what was more embarrassing, my choir director stopping the choir that last time mid-stanza, turning to me and saying, “you can do it!” (clearly my fault) or standing up at the end of the song to be acknowledged to applause that I knew I did not deserve. If I would have glanced above my head, I am sure there was a neon sign flashing “FRAUD!”
It’s funny (not haha funny, ironic funny) that I probably had much less experience with children than I had playing piano before becoming a mom. There is no questionnaire or training (babysitting does NOT count), just a positive pregnancy test and all of a sudden you are holding your newborn baby wrapped in a generic footprint baby blanket and the nurse is telling you that you can go home now. I remember talking to a friend on the phone after Emma’s first check-up flustered because I thought that the doctor would cut her finger nails- you know, like they do at the vet for your puppy. You mean, I have to do that?
Three kids later, there've been plenty of false starts, restarts and redos. Days where Matt has looked at me and said, “You can do it!” when I just want to hide from the world (or maybe just those tiny humans that call me mom). There’s definitely no applause and if there was, I’d probably feel that same sweaty-armpit, deer-in-headlights panic that I felt on stage all those years ago.
It makes sense why so many women feel conflicted about motherhood. Our culture cannot seem to decide how to categorize it. Motherhood is elevated to the highest calling and in the next breath it’s diminished to lowly and insignificant. We try to hold on to our pre-mom self with white knuckles when our hearts and minds and bodies are being stretched to capacity. Anger spills out, frustration, disappointment, and underneath it all the general feeling that I am so not qualified for this.
Here’s what I know is true. I am not the same mom that brought Emma home from the hospital 7 years ago (I’m a pro at cutting fingernails). No matter how much I resisted and tried to escape it at times, I changed. Not only changed, but I can also look back with a deep sense of gratitude for the moments I felt stretched so thin I thought I might snap.
Motherhood is so wildly different from any experience we will have on this earth. It’s not a show we can rehearse for or a job we can work harder to impress our boss. It arrives and takes up residence in our senses, our emotions, our decisions, our actions. We want to fight it, run from it or simply pretend it does not exist but one day we look back and look inside and see there is a strength that wasn't there before. A confidence, a resolve that makes us hold our head a little higher. Hope gently reveals that this season we were trying to fight was not an inconvenience, but a blessing. What if motherhood is one of the places that God is continuing to perfect His good work in us? It’s not just transforming us into better moms, but into women who look more like Jesus.
I am convinced and confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will [continue to] perfect and complete it until the day of Christ Jesus [the time of His return]. (Philippians 1:6 Amplified version).