Mother’s Day. This should be an easy post right? So many mothers to love and appreciate in my life. My mom. Micah’s mom. My sister, and sisters in love, raising my nieces and nephews. Our many wonderful grandmothers. My spiritual moms. My friends’ mothers who have let me sleep over so often they loved me as their own. It’s easy, right?
Just put up some sweet pictures of the women who have helped form me into the woman and mother I am becoming. Say thank you. Add some heart emojis. But, not super surprisingly, mommin’ aint easy and neither is this post.
After my abortion there were years I wondered if I’d blown it forever. Could God really forgive a broken girl like me? Maybe I’d lost my only chance at being a mom. There was no life after death. The voice of shame told me I didn’t deserve forgiveness or the feeling of a tiny baby fluttering to life in my womb.
Nearly nine years later, I cried hard when those TWO pink lines lit up like little flares. I was getting a second chance! Those two little, pink lines became two little, pink babies in my arms. With Micah sharing the load, I began the difficult metamorphosis into this magnificent, yet mysterious, woman we call “mother.”
And as I served and cared and cried and kvetched, I was being transformed. Through sweat and blood and tears, I was being carved and refined into something stronger and more resilient than I could have known. Every tantrum and failure (theirs and mine) was revealing something fierce and formidable in me. An almost mystical quality that is motherhood. The power to comfort. The power to nurture. The power to love unconditionally. And even as I write, and glimpse the nature that God placed within us, I count my faults.
When my pain eclipses my ability to be attentive. When I lose my temper. When I simply don’t know what my children need or how to help them. Losing Micah brought all my weakness into the light. Now I am no longer wife or partner or companion. I am “only” mother. I never thought I would have to do this alone. Lonely. Feeling half of the whole I wanted to create a family with. Here, the kintsugi process is so very visceral. Feeling the heat of the molten gold restoring what was lost. Making something new.
Today, those incredible little people who call me, “mom,” did some very sweet things. Hot coffee in my Super Mom mug. Notes with heart felt words. A song picked just for me. And I wonder, as I feel the searing liquid gold slipping between the many pieces of my heart, if it’s possible that God still has second chances in the cards for me. If He just might make me whole again. If life after death still exists…
Image: Lindsay Schmidt Photography
