On Motherhood

One of my favorite friends said today that a gift like mine is both a blessing and a curse. I don't know what gift she was talking about but I thought to myself "Hmph." For two reasons: first, because my friends see me through a lens that is clouded with so much grace and because somehow the cloudy focus allows them to see the contents of my heart so clearly that I am frequently astounded by how they just seem to get it without me tripping all over myself to explain it succinctly because I don't do succinct or clear or direct. Second, because I see my gift as having a heart that is constantly raw and that often feels like both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I care about the world at large and a curse because caring often leaves me in a crumpled mess on the floor swearing at God and indicting Him for doing a crappy job of healing the world. It is both a blessing and a curse that I have not been struck by lightning yet for my irreverence and lack of humility.

I often turn my eyes to the heavens and thank God for this tribe of mine. Getting to do life and motherhood with women who I don't have to pretend with has been such a blessing to me. This is mostly because motherhood has not been what I thought it would be. Oh, yes, I was one of those starry eyed and glowing pregnant ladies who looked at motherhood with a cloudy lens of grace but my lens did not allow me to see so clearly. Before Fifi, I believed I had all the answers. I knew exactly what kind of parent I would be and most importantly, I would not be my own mother. I was precious. And surely infuriating to all of the people who were silently wishing for motherhood to smack me right across the face with all of its indignities like explosive poop, exhaustion and buckets upon buckets of spit up.

When I was plunged into motherhood and received the proverbial slap in the face with reality, I spent an inordinate amount of time questioning what I used to believe was my call to mothering. I held steadfast my entire life to the belief that my only calling in life was to be a mother. I thought that because my divine purpose was to have babies, that having babies and the subsequent raising of them would be easy. I believed I would never feel lost. I believed I would revel in the spit up and the midnight feedings and endless poop because it was all I had ever longed for. Bless my heart.

What I found instead was that this was not at all what I had signed up for. Constantly being needed and touched and never knowing what the right answer was piled up one on top of the other and they filled up this pit of doubt that I had about who I was supposed to be. I struggled with feeling like I would never get to do anything more than wipe butts and clean up puke all day. I was fighting a war with myself over mothering one person and wanting to be someone else entirely.

The quest for a deeper meaning while I was in the everyday trenches led me to a group of women that would become the safest landing place of my life. It led me to a homeless shelter on a downtown corner full of women who have dreams of being something more than single and penniless. It led me to church. It led me to a multitude of places that have combined to hollow out the pit of doubt I possessed, one shovelful at a time. As Fifi grew more independent and she started preschool and I had time to pee by myself, I started to feel at ease about the struggles and indignities of motherhood. I could laugh when she threw her breakfast in the floor and I could function on less than 6 hours of sleep a night. I went back to school myself. I believed that all of these things together amounted to a good enough life and they were just my reality and I was mostly content.

Until today.

The words "sometimes a gift like hers is a blessing and a curse" totally unhinged me.

I had spent the morning in a mall with an almost 4 year old Fifi. I walked behind her as she raced ahead in her frothy pink dress and hot pink tennis shoes, swinging her lovey, Lenny, behind her. I attempted to snap a photo of her multiple times so that I could look back later and remember her joy and my anxiety about being surrounded by clothes made in sweat shops by slaves and children. I thought over and over that if I could wish for anything it would be that all mamas could witness the freedom of unbridled childhood jubilance without the inequities of living in places crushed by disease and drought and patriarchy and war.

Later in the car, as I was still lost in my gift being a blessing and a curse and the injustice of me having a daughter who is healthy, who has had plenty to eat today, who can live and play without the fear of being sold to the highest bidder and who gets to steer the ship for her own life if she chooses, a revelation that has been almost four years in the making suddenly clobbered me.

I was called to motherhood because God, who knit me together in my mother's womb, knew my heart before I could even admit that He existed. He knew that the first cries of a baby propelled from my body and the sounds of her midnight suckling and the dreams I saw in her big, blue eyes would both rip my heart wide open and invisibly, irreversibly connect me with mothers all over the world who have seen and felt the same things with their own babies. God knit together a little girl in my own womb so that every time I looked at her I would feel compelled to fight, vote and pray for clean water, safe working conditions, standardized care for women all over the world, food for their babies' bellies, freedom from misogyny and patriarchal religious traditions. He knew that without the singular experience of loving someone more than I loved my own pride or dignity, I would never be compelled to dance outside of my comfort zone. He has known all these years that having my own precious daughter would ignite fires in me that nothing but justice and equality would extinguish.

More astonishing than the way He has used motherhood to fill me up with faith has been the fact that he waited almost four years for me to stop complaining about it long enough to see the bigger picture.

For three years and ten months, He has been patiently waiting for me to stop wallowing in my disappointment that my life didn't go as planned and wake up to see the bliss and beauty that is found when I give up my preconceived notions and look into the heart of God.