since we're on the topic of motherhood...

my sister gave me this precious locket today for mother's day w/ pics of my kids in it. 

I became a mother twelve days after my 21st birthday. 

Just ten months before, I'd met my son's father. We quickly moved in together, and shortly thereafter, I found out I was pregnant. Do the math. Just twenty, I was in the midst of a few years of very reckless living, to put it lightly. These are years my mother cringes at when spoken of, if that tells you much. I pretty much "had everything going for me" before I turned 17, and by twenty, I had completely trashed my life. As if God knew the only way to save me from the utter depths of my dive into drug culture was to awaken my senses to life. So he put Dakota in my belly. He knew that I couldn't continue to do the things I was doing knowing there was a life inside of me. When I took my pregnancy test, I had just handed off a massive pina colada and a cigarette to Dakota's dad in a flash moment realizing to myself that "I probably should take this pregnancy test before I consume this drink". I will never forget that moment sitting on the toilet in my apartment in Decatur. We were watching TV on the same old UHF/VHF TV set my Mom bought when she moved into her own place after she and my Dad split, some stupid movie, maybe Zorro? I don't know... I just had this moment, I knew I was late, I'd bought the test... and it was positive. Life changed forever. Completely changed. Within five months I was married, sober, and trying to make beauty from ashes on my own... 

To say that becoming a mother changed me is to put it lightly. Becoming a mother literally saved my life. And here's something even more mind blowing... in the midst of my deepest, darkest place, God put this gift of a child... the most PRECIOUS gift, the most INTENSE love, the most PROFOUND encounter and understanding of SACRIFICE, the most beautiful treasure on this earth - he gave that to my in the midst of my deepest darkest place... what kind of Father gives a gift like that to a child who has run far away, who is still so far off that there is no hope of his returning? This was a profound and life changing encounter with God and his love for me, and was the beginning of my long return Home to relationship with Christ, after many years of yo-yo-ing between the world and it's intoxications and the intoxication of Jesus' love, which still melts me even now.

Fast forward eight years... remarried, pregnancy planned after sadly losing two precious babies... everything within my being prayed that this baby would stay firmly in my belly until her dawn into this world. I held onto her so tightly, there was a lesson her coming into being and her entrance into this world that God wanted to teach me about letting go and about his unique plan for her life. He wanted to upset my agenda; upset my methodology; upset my plans. He wanted to show my that even though things don't go the way you think they ought to, the way they occur is perfect, because they are according to His plan, which is perfection, and is unique to the design for the baby he has created. For me, this was and is scary... surrender is complete vulnerability, exposure, abandonment of the mind and the will, floating on the waves of chance, but trusting the design in the waves... does that make sense? Still, so many lessons... from the beginning... these little lives so transformational from their inception... conception... so much power in a life, so much Power in a life. 

Then Noah - my Bear, my treasure... tonight, I held him like a little baby and rocked him to sleep in a rare moment with my rough and tumble and busy boy. He is getting too big and my heart literally breaks at the thought. I am utterly captivated and in love with this beautiful child. My heart is a big puddle of goo when I look at him. With this precious babe, I surrendered. I opened my heart and mind to God's will for his birth, his life... though I am holding on so tightly and so in love, I just wonder sometimes if God would take him from me? He came into the world in a completely uneventful and natural birth. Again, fear creeps up... is God giving it to me easy now so that I will be ready for the fight later? I don't know. And it's silly to think this way... but shouldn't there be a formula? The only formula is cause and effect... sowing and reaping... and I pray that the Lord has mercy on me with my babe.

Yes, the cliches of motherhood all apply here. I am most definitely one to nod yes and all of the same stay at home mom standard complaints and stereotypes that exist. Do I savor alone time? Yes. Do I sometimes wish that I had not squandered my twenties and been free to become an adult without a child by my side? YES, all the time. Do I sometimes find myself daydreaming about what life will be like when I can leave my kids for long weekends and go on trips alone with my husband? Um, yeah. But, well, here -- let me pull out yet another cliche for you -- I wouldn't trade the lessons, the joy, the pain, the heartache, the tears, the heart swollen with pride, love, joy..., the transformation that has occurred within me for anything at all... 

In their beginnings, in their lives, there is something so deep about the connections we have as mothers with our children... something no other person in their lives will be able to experience. What an honor. What a gift. What a treasure. To care for their basic needs... to nurture and love and minister to their hearts... the return is worth it all, and even if there is no return at all... we have been changed. I have been changed.