The girls woke up really early this morning. In an effort to do nothing while still maintaining consciousness, I started searching through my phone, and I came across a photo montage video I made of Magoo shortly after she turned one.
Two things instantly came to mind…
1. That little girl had a lot of clothes
2. I took a lot of pictures.
I had forgotten about that video. The last song on it is “Bless the Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts. That’s Magoo and my song. It always brings a tear to my eye, and that’s just compounded when it’s accompanying pictures of her infancy.
To be honest, it was weird to look at those pictures now that she’s almost seven. I know they are her. I’m the one who took all the pictures, and I can remember almost every moment portrayed. And yet, she’s not that baby anymore. At all.
But another thing stuck out for me. I realized just how much of my life revolved around that little girl from the first moment she was born… actually from the first moment I knew she existed deep within me.
We had wanted children for so long, but prior to Magoo, my life was all about work. Not in a bad way. I loved my job. I found it fulfilling. I spent almost every waking moment thinking about my students and how I could help them develop their writing and make it in a world that was maybe less than comfortable to them. At the time, I thought nothing could be more fulfilling. Nothing could be more exhilarating than standing in front of a classroom, working with students, and seeing their eyes light up when they finally understood something they had been grappling with for a decade.
And then I became a mom. And I learned a new kind of fulfillment. A kind that, as of yet, I have found nowhere else in this world.
During those early days, there wasn’t a whole lot to do to be honest. Magoo was a very calm baby. She was easy to please. I had no car, so I had no where to go. For eight plus hours a day all we had was each other and a whole lot of corn surrounding our little townhouse.
So we read. And I took pictures. And we sang songs. And I took pictures. And she slept. And… I took pictures.
And looking back, those first moments and months of motherhood still have an aura about them. Yes, I was lost in a fog of hormones. But I was also lost in a fog of this little person. And I never wanted to leave that second fog. And I don’t think I have.
Throughout pregnancy, a mom starts to focus more and more of her thoughts towards her child. Anxious thoughts, anticipatory thoughts, excited thought. But besides eating well and taking vitamins and decorating a nursery, there’s not a whole lot a mom can do at that point besides think.
And then you go into labor, and it’s all about you for those five or ten or fifty million hours. It has to be. The experience is all consuming.
And then the baby passes fully into this world. She is placed on your chest. And you are never the same.
The things that matter are different. The priorities are different. No matter how much you still passionately care about other things, nothing can quite match the passion with which you love your child.
And it happens in a instant.
And that’s what I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this morning. How there is a before and an after. And how they look so very different. And how we can be so fully engrossed in each when they happen.
I’m not sure I’m making a whole lot of sense here. I’m not a morning person, and I almost never write in the morning.
It’s just that I’m looking around this room. I’m looking at three little girls in footy pajamas waiting for their daddy to get home from his morning men’s group at church, and I am overcome by just how full it all is.
Yes, I get overwhelmed. A lot. There is a whole lot of living going on in this house at every second.
But in moments like this, when it is all calm, and we aren’t trying to get to school or prepare a meal or get to bed, I’m just overwhelmed by the enormity of this gift and of this responsibility.
For years, I would pray and ask God for a child, for children. At the time, I didn’t know what I was asking for. I was asking for someone to love, and I was asking for someone to care for and nurture and teach.
But what I got… what all of us mothers get… is so much more.
We are given something bigger than ourselves. Something that, God willing, will live on well past us. A legacy. Hope. A future. And a love so deep it expands us and changes us and makes us more than we knew possible before.
I look back on those prayers and laugh at how naive they were. How little I was asking for in relation to how much I have been given.
My life was full before children. I was happy. I had passion.
But now… my life is a gift that I never even knew was possible. And it’s something I cannot describe in words. It’s just something that fills me to overflowing as I sit here and breathe them in.
Some people say that God doesn’t exist. That we are all just a lucky coincidence. They ask me how I can believe in a God.
Then I look at my children, and I laugh. With all of this, how could I possible not believe in God?