Last week, my best friend had a baby. And not just any baby… but a trying-for-three-years, long-awaited, prayed for, cried for baby. A healthy baby boy.
A few weeks ago, she called me up and left me a long, rambling voicemail, as we always do when we can’t actually connect on the phone. She gave me a two minute update on life, filling me in on her final weeks of pregnancy, her marriage, and their last minute decision to re-do their flooring before the baby’s arrival and then she paused and said, “I can’t believe I get to have a child.”
The words reverberated through my mind for the rest of the day, and I teared up as I repeated the message to Micah later that evening.
I can’t believe I get to have a child.
Uttered so gratefully, so joyfully, so humbly from a woman who didn’t know if she would ever get to have a child. It convicted me to my core. Here I am with two beautiful children and another on the way, but how often is my demeanor toward them filled with amazement, humility, and gratitude?
Yes, I love my children and I find great joy in motherhood, but is my daily attitude toward the messes and the discipline and the crying one that says: “I can’t believe I get to have these children.”
I am writing this on day three of utter motherhood chaos. It all started when Zianne and Talitha were playing in the pantry as I fixed dinner the other night. Talitha is obsessed with taking spices off the shelf while I cook, and this evening Zianne had joined in her game, allowing me a few calm minutes to cook in relative peace. When I told them it was time to clean up for dinner, Talitha tried to return a giant, brand new bottle of olive oil to the shelf. With a crack, the entire glass bottle crashed to the floor and 32 ounces of oil began gushing all over the kitchen. She stood startled in the midst of oil and broken glass with her bare little feet. Dinner got cold on our plates as I sopped up the mess and mopped the floor. For the past few days, I have been finding random drops of oil all over the kitchen, a pattern that will likely continue until we move out this summer.
I can’t believe I get to have these children.
After our lukewarm dinner, Zianne began crying and whining in a way that is out sorts for her character. She had been fighting a cold all week, and her flushed cheeks indicated a fever, and her cough was growing worse by the hour. I put her to bed at 8:00pm on the dot, only to hear her hacking cough through the door all evening. I returned to her room every hour to resettle her and console her crying. This pattern continued through the night… midnight, 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am. I journeyed back and forth between my bed and hers, sometimes offering extra medicine or a back rub, sometimes trying to sleep next to her until her flailing legs kicked me or she woke up crying once again. At one point (I think in the 2am hour), I found her sitting up in bed yelling, “I need crackers and peanut butter! I need crackers and peanut butter!” I asked her if she really wanted crackers or if she wanted to sleep, to which she replied “Sleep!” and dropped her head back down to her pillow. A similar routine happened last night too. Lots of crying. A sweaty, breaking fever. Her raspy little three year-old voice telling me, “I’m sicky,” and “I don’t want to have a cough!” and me unable to help other than laying my exhausted body on the bed next to her.
I can’t believe I get to have these children.
Zianne’s medical saga should be ending soon. We took her to urgent care last night, where she received a steroid shot to help her overcome croup. She jerked violently with the first poke of the needle, and I had to drape myself across her tiny, screaming body as the nurse injected her one more time to get the medicine into her system.
I can’t believe I get to have these children.
We just celebrated Christmas, the birth of God himself in tiny infant form. But nine months before Christmas, Mary joined the ranks of motherhood, likely scared and overwhelmed. When the angel announced that she would bear God’s son, no doubt a zillion thoughts raced through her head. Her parents would probably question her purity and her character. Joseph, her fiancé, would surely call off their wedding. How would she raise a child in a world where single women (much less women with “illegitimate” offspring) were disregarded or degraded?
At least these would be my thoughts, and I assume Mary, although more noble than I am, might have had them too.
But do you know how she responded to this unexpected and slightly terrifying message of her pregnancy? She said..
“I can’t believe I get to have a child.”
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.”
Luke 1:46-49
I share these thoughts with you not to suggest you are ungrateful or to belittle the many, many trials and refining hardships that come with motherhood. I speak to you, mother to mother, because I know it’s hard. Tonight I might finally get to sleep through the night, but some other mom down the road or across the country will be up all night consoling her sick child. The oil will spill, the paint will splatter, sometimes the shards of broken glass will cut the toddler feet, and you will find yourself spending Christmas vacation in the emergency room. Sometimes it’s a steroid shot, other times it’s stitches or a broken bone. Sometimes it’s the whining, the defiance, the sibling rivalry. It’s always the constant testing of your patience. Whatever it may be, there is no doubt that motherhood asks everything of us… it asks us to give up our comfort, our sleep, our convenience, our selfishness, our neatly arranged plans, often our own health, and always our pride.
It’s easy, oh-so-easy, to grit our teeth in these circumstances… to use a sharp tone, to cuss under our breath, to give the silent treatment. I have responded in all these ways, I assure you. But I hope that as time goes by, we will respond differently, even when tested by toddler tantrums and teenage rebellion. I hope we will learn to whisper to ourselves a humble, thankful, joyful phrase time and time again…
I can’t believe I get to have a child.
