an un-mother’s day

You know those years when you just don’t feel like celebrating your birthday?

Such was my attitude toward Mother’s Day this go-round. I was just not all that into it.

My mothering lately has been grumpy, impatient and frazzled. It’s a stressful season of our family’s life, so I’m trying not to take it too seriously. But I still didn’t feel much like celebrating. Even though I believe firmly that Mother’s Day isn’t something we earn, I decided I’d rather have a normal, quiet, low-key Sunday than a Hallmark holiday.

But as I nursed Grinch-like sentiments this past week, the notion of Alice in Wonderland’s un-birthday wryly popped into my head. What would it mean to celebrate an un-Mother’s Day instead of the normal flowers-chocolate-&-brunch festivities?

First I thought it might mean indulging in a day of activities that had absolutely nothing to do with mothering. For example, uninterrupted sleep! Adult conversation! Spa treatments! Wine! Gourmet meals that someone else cooked! Plenty of geographic distance from one’s progeny!

But I realized that is, in fact, the perfect Mother’s Day. And I got it last year. Whoops.

So then I started from a truly unconventional standpoint. What if I spent the day thinking of un-mothers instead?

Un-mothers could be fathers, the paternal yang to the maternal yin. So yesterday I prayed for fathers – for their work outside the home to provide for their families and for their work at home to nurture their children.

Un-mothers could be children, the necessary and opposite other half of the mothering relationship. So I prayed for children who daily seek the love of a mother to help them grow.

Un-mothers could be women who want desperately to have children, those who suffer through infertility, miscarriage and failed adoptions. So I prayed for the women whose hearts break as the years pass, whose stomachs sink when strangers ask questions, whose hands ache to hold a baby.

Un-mothers could be women who have chosen not to have children, those who feel called to different paths. So I prayed for women whose vocations lead them to other nurturing relationships, rewarding work, and life-giving commitments.

Un-mothers could be women who have suffered the loss of a child, whose motherhood has been broken and reshaped by pain and death. So I prayed for women who grieve for their children, who struggle to redefine themselves as mother after loss, who seek to go on living after the life they held closest to their heart has stopped.

Un-mothers could be women who do not want the children they have. So I prayed for women whose motherhood was forced on them, or who made decisions to end their child’s life, or whose deep sorrow and anger at the world causes them to hurt their children.

In the Christian tradition, one way to describe God is the via positiva: what God is like. God is like a mother. Another way to describe God is the via negativa: what God is not like. God is not like a mother.

One way to understand mothering from a spiritual perspective is the via positiva – what it is to be a mother. Much of my thinking and writing in this space takes this slant. But another way to understand mothering is the via negativa – what it is not. Broadening my perspective to embrace those who are not mothers helps me to understand my own parenting better, situating my cares and concerns within a wider view.

And praying for those whose lives and loves differ from mine reminds me that all of us, mothers and un-mothers, are swept up into the mystery of who God is.

Which is a question well worth pondering, no matter what day it is.

enlighten your spirit: louise erdrich

“But of all passing notions, that of a human being for a child is perhaps the purest in the abstract, and the most complicated in reality. Growing, bearing, mothering or fathering, supporting, and at last letting go of an infant is a powerful and mundane creative act that rapturously sucks up whole chunks of life.”

Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birth Year

I knew from the moment I saw the book’s cover that I would lose my heart to it.

Drawn from the back, a dark-haired woman nuzzles a dark-haired baby in the curve of her neck, both gazing together at a blue jay outside the window. A newer edition has replaced the duo with the lone bird’s unflinching stare. But at the beginning of my own birth year with baby #2, it was this quiet, anonymous madonna-and-child that drew me in.

Erdrich describes her book as “a set of thoughts from one self to the other – writer to parent, artist to mother.” (So of course I tore through it cover to cover.)

And her treatment of a well-worn feminist theme – the dilemma of mother torn between child and work – is tender and tough at all once.

But what I love above all is that her treatment of maternal love is the most true and least sugary-sentimental I’ve yet read:

We live and work with a divided consciousness. It is a beautiful enough shock to fall in love with another adult, to feel the possibility of unbearable sorrow at the loss of that other, essential personality, expressed just so, that particular touch. But love of an infant is of a different order. It is twinned love, all absorbing, a blur of boundaries and messages. It is uncomfortably close to self-erasure, and in the face of it one’s fat ambitions, desperations, private icons, and urges fall away into a dreamlike before that haunts and forces itself into the present with tough persistence. The self will not be forced under, nor will the baby’s needs gracefully retreat. The world tips away when we look into our children’s faces.

You have to love nature to truly love this book, or at least be willing to stay the course through Erdrich’s wanderings through the wild that eventually wind back to mothering.

(You also have to forgive her several sections of randomly-placed recipes and homages to her husband’s cooking. Though pregnant and nursing mothers can’t help but fall in love with food as they nourish themselves and their babies at a staggering pace. Writes the woman who just helped herself to second dinner.)

But anyone who has lived through the seasons of a child’s early years will find themselves in her changing landscapes, both of the natural world and the interior life.

She weaves the stories of three of her babies into one narrative of a nameless daughter, reminiscent of the way any mother of multiple children looks back and wonders, “Was that with the first baby? Or the second? Or was it the third?”

A blur of babyhoods, but the powerful love and the raw frustrations and the deep conflicts meld into one story of woman becoming mother over time.

I love this memoir of early motherhood because it is poetic in its imagery and powerful in its honesty.

She writes of walking in winter at the end of a pregnancy and letting her swollen body sink to rest in a deep snowbank, wishing she could just birth the baby right then and there.

She describes her fraying nerves while rocking a colicky newborn for the umpteenth night in a row that finally resort to whispering (amidst the baby’s screams) words that parents never admit in the light of day: I love you, but you’re driving me completely nuts. You’re such a g****** crank.

I still laugh out loud when I think about that scene.

So if you long to write in the middle of life with littles, or if you gaze out windows to mark seasons passing through the maddening monotony, or if you simply love to dig in the dirt with children, your mothering spirit can find yourself in Erdrich’s words.

Perhaps we all can:

 Mothering is a subtle art whose rhythm we collect and learn, as much from one another as by instinct. Taking shape, we shape each other, with subtle pressures and sudden knocks. The challenges shape us, approvals refine, the wear and tear of small abrasions transform until we’re slowly made up of one another and yet wholly ourselves.

why i hate to leave my babies (and why i do it anyway)

I love my boys. And I love my job.

And I hate the tension between them.

While my commute being only a walk downstairs can seem enviable, working from home brings its own struggles. Boundaries are blurred. Child care or housework can encroach on my work time if I’m not careful. Or work can seep into every hour of the day and corner of the house if I don’t make myself fully present to my children when work is done.

Yes, working from home means I’m closer to my kids when they need me. Yes, working part-time means I’m able to be with them for much of the day-to-day of their early years. But it also means that when they are wailing upstairs, I can’t run to them – there is work to be done. Likewise, when they burst out in peals of laughter with the babysitter, I miss out on their joy. And that kills me, too.

Both sounds – the cries and the delights – tear at me when I can’t be right there. The flip side of being only a door away is that I am only a door away. And no white noise or background music can mask a mother’s most immediate and instinctive desire to run to her child.

There are other frustrations, of course. Trying to explain to a toddler why he can’t barge in on his mama whenever he wants a read or a cuddle. Pumping milk for a baby in the room right above my head. Navigating the tricky balance between letting a responsible sitter take charge of their care and feeling tempted to micro-manage since I’m within earshot.

And I’ve learned that living in-between worlds – that of the working mother and the stay-at-home mother – means I’m not good at doing either 100%.

Not being a full-time stay-at-home mom means that on the days when I’m with both boys from dawn till dusk with no break for my work, we are all on each other’s nerves by bedtime. I struggle when I’m home with them full-time.

Not being a full-time working mother means that on the days when I have to leave all day (or week) for meetings or conferences, the whole household is turned upside down to prepare for my extended absence. I struggle to get everything organized – for me and for them – to be gone full-time. To say nothing of hating how it feels to slip out of the house before they wake and return late after they’re back in bed.

So my work and my mothering are decidedly a muddle in the middle. Both/and; neither/nor.

And yet somehow I make it work and find the back-and-forth to be life-giving, if exhausting. I make it work because I love my kids and I love my job. I love using my skills and my gifts and my education to help make a small difference in my corner of the world. I feel called to this work and want to give myself to it.

But even knowing that I am blessed to have choices, and choices between good things, I still feel deeply torn on some days. The tensions I feel between my work and my family will never be fully resolved. I simply have to learn to live as best I can within them and rejoice in the fullness of my life writ large, pulled back from the daily effort required to keep juggling all these balls in the air.

One truth I did not know when I started on this mothering journey was how deeply compromised I would sometimes feel about the choices I would make. How much I would envy moms on one side of the fence or the other. But it turns out that parenting is a much more complicated picture than the pretty pastels I painted it to be in my youth.

Motherhood is also about compromise. And ambivalence. And guilt. And fear that if you choose poorly, you may somehow fail the most precious people in your life.

And when we don’t talk about the shadow side of mothering – when we insist upon the illusions of loving-every-second and complete-and-utter bliss – we sell ourselves short. All of us.

Including the God who mothers. The God who works. And the God who calls all of us to become the people we were created to be: people who give ourselves to work and relationships and service and others.

So I share my struggles here, in this space, with you, because I think it is only in the honest claiming and sharing of our stories that we create a community where diverse decisions and situations can be understood. I stake none of my choices as normative: this is simply the path I carved for myself. But showing the truth of it – the good and the bad – and inviting you to share your own story in turn reveals the many ways in which we are called and create our life out of our many calls.

One wish I have is for better language to share our stories. No “stay-at-home mom” lounges in the comfort of her couch all day, and all moms are “working mothers.” Women are called and gifted to serve the world in a myriad of vocations and professions. And it is the goodness of the work we are each called to do that makes our sacrifices “worth it” in the broadest sense.

So how could we more truthfully and creatively share the stories of the work we do as parents: inside and outside the home, paid and unpaid, for our children and for others? And how might this help us to tell God’s story better, too?

Where do you live in this tension?

How is your parenting shaped by compromise or conflict?

How do you embrace the choices you’ve made?

parenting in advent: first sunday

“Yet, O Lord, you are our father; we are the clay and you the potter; we are all the work of your hands.” (Isaiah 64:7)

At the university where I went to grad school, there is a pottery studio. No mere hangout of artsy undergrads, this is a place of pure creation.

Until I crossed its dusty doorstep and breathed in the deep smell of clay, I never imagined how the work of a potter’s hands could be theological, philosophical, intellectual. But the master and his apprentices have devoted themselves to an art that springs from the heart of the university and the abbey. Theirs is a craft that comes from deep within the land: the clay hidden within the hills, the water that flows deep underground, the wood from surrounding forests that stokes the kiln’s roaring fires.

The few times that I’ve been privileged to watch the potter at his wheel, I marvel at his intense concentration on the clay taking shape beneath his fingers. His hands instinctively know how to bend and curve to produce the cup or bowl or plate he desires. But as he works, he speaks with reverence of honoring the materials and the process by which pottery is created. He honors the life within the art, the freedom of the clay itself to become what it can be, the beauty it can call forth from within the potter.

Isaiah calls God father and potter. Yet the connection between parent and artist is not always immediate. Yes, the raw material of the child is placed in our hands and given to us to mold. But we were not apprenticed in this demanding work; nothing prepares us for this all-consuming call. Yes, the work is less certain science and more attempted art. But it is not always beautiful and attractive; it reveals our darkest sides and our deepest flaws.

Sometimes these words of Isaiah seem too easy: we are passive clay and God is active potter; we lie waiting on the wheel for God to shape our lives. What I forget when I breeze over this image is that God as father is like God as potter: blessing the creation, honoring its freedom, celebrating its unique beauty. There is a gentleness to God’s hands, a loving working on our lives. We are works in process, always spinning round the wheel.

Our work as mothers and fathers is earthy and embodied like the potter’s. The wisdom that guides us is found deep within, even when we struggle to let it shape us. Perhaps this image of God as parent and potter can invite us to see our parenting as art, to see our children as works in process. In this Advent season of preparing, how can we give ourselves into God’s hands to be softened and smoothed into the people we hope to be?

kindred (mothering) spirits

One of the beautiful and surprising things I’ve discovered since I began to write this blog is the many kindred spirits to be found in the blogosphere.

Whether it’s comments from faithful readers or links from fellow bloggers, I have come to treasure the connections that this space has let me make. And today I get to celebrate one of those connection in a lovely way.

When I first happened upon Ginny’s blog at Random Acts of Momness, I felt I had found a diamond in the rough. Here was a true mothering spirit, someone else who loved to write and muse about the connections between faith and family life. Then when I realized hers was also a byline regularly carried by our diocesan paper, I was even more impressed that this kindred spirit was an Actual Published Author. (Yes, I am still totally geeked out by this kind of stuff.)

So when Ginny asked me to write a guest post for her series on “The Best Gift My Mom Gave Me,” I was delighted to contribute. Not only because it’s a wonderful question and a chance to celebrate the most influential mothering spirit in my life. But also because it will hopefully lead all of you to check out her blog and her writing as well.

No matter what our work in the world, we need kindred spirits to carry us along the way. Anne of Green Gables was absolutely right.

“Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.” 

parenting in ordinary time: 33rd sunday

She obtains wool and flax and works with loving hands. She puts her hands to the distaff, and her fingers ply the spindle. She reaches out her hands to the poor, and extends her arms to the needy. (Proverbs 31: 13, 19-20)

“Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities.” (Matthew 25:21)

Here is what my hands did today: Changed diapers. Washed dishes. Stirred oatmeal. Poured milk. Dried tears. Wiped mouths. Typed emails. Filed papers. Turned pages. Hung laundry. Tickled tummies. Stacked blocks. Served dinner. Drew baths. Tucked blankets. Patted backs.

Parenting young children is hands-on. It’s dirt under nails after digging in the sandbox. It’s pruned fingertips from playing in the bath. It’s calloused thumbs from constructing cribs and climbers.

We use our hands all day long – to turn ingredients into dinner, to turn chaos into cleanliness, to turn tantrums into laughter. We work with our hands at home, in the office, in the classroom. We carry babies, we carry briefcases. The most ordinary of actions, the most basic of motions – what could be holy about hands?

And yet we prove our great love through tiny gestures, our faithfulness through small matters.

Imagine all that Jesus’ hands did. Touched lepers. Held children. Broke bread. Poured wine. Dirty, ordinary, everyday work. But done with the greatest love that ever spurred two hands to action. And so it was good; it was holy; it was divine.

People often talk about “the hand of God” as a weighty influence, orchestrating events and controlling outcomes. But the fingerprints of God are often small smudges: startling sunrises, quiet lulls, surprise encounters, well-placed words. God’s hands are at work in the world in small ways as well as grand. And inspired by our Creator, our hands are invited to create in small, everyday ways as well.

Hands and fingers, nails and skin. Whatever work we are called to in the world starts with the same two hands. And while we sometimes envy the work of other’s hands – I wish I were more artistic, I wish I were stronger - God has entrusted us with talents all our own. We are simply called to care for them well so that we can return with hands full of what they have multiplied.

What we do with our two hands becomes the work of our lives. They allow our gifts to flourish. They make our faith and our love known. They seek to leave a small corner of this world better than we found it.

As parents we hold hands, and then one day, we have to let them go. A million small gestures will pass unnoticed in between, but they are the stuff of vocation, the proof of our faithfulness.

What good work have your two hands done today? What small ways have shown your great love?

nurture your mothering spirit: a new series

So here it is, dear reader. The last in my bursts of inspiration for Mothering Spirit 2.0. (I hope it does not disappoint, or you may have to wait awhile for the next brainstorm.)

I’ve been reflecting lately on this space: how this blog lives and moves and has its being. And I’ve come to realize that it has many purposes. It motivates me to write. It helps me to reflect. It allows me to explore (and sometimes vent).

But it also reminds me that there are other seeking souls like me out there. And I’d love to make this space more of a place where we can connect and share what lifts us up.

You may have noticed that the blog’s tagline recently changed to “towards a spirituality of parenting.” That’s because over the past almost-two (!) years since I started writing here, I’ve come to discover that there is very little online for parents interested in reflecting on the spiritual side of their vocation.

Yes, there are forums where moms of the same faith can connect. Yes, there are great websites about religion and great websites about parenting. But the two rarely meet. And I’d like to explore more of these intersections.

So I’m hoping to nudge my writing and our conversations here together in this direction. We all have wisdom to share and we all have a deep yearning to connect with others and with the One who made us – no matter how solid or shaky or skeptical our faith may be at times. I am Catholic in my bones, but I’ve tried hard to cultivate an ecumenical heart. So I hope you will feel at home here, no matter what your practice or persuasion.

In this weekly space called “nurture your mothering spirit,” I’ll share a snippet of something I’ve discovered along my own journey of motherhood. A book, a prayer, a practice, or an artist that has helped me to see more clearly, reflect more deeply, or care more closely for my own spirit and soul. I hope you’ll share your own in turn, and we’ll be able to build up a collection of ideas to inspire our mothering – and fathering - spirits along the way.

So check back tomorrow for the first in the series. I’m excited to share a few surprises with you as we go – stay tuned!

a (belated) labor day reflection

(I figured that since T showed up a bit late, I had a grace period to post this as well. Hey, at least I mustered up enough collective brain cells to write something from the first two weeks of newbornhood…) 

I have never been a great athlete. A brief montage of highlights of my illustrious sporting career would include:

1. knocking myself unconscious before a junior high softball game while goofing around on a swingset;
2. breaking my ankle after tripping over my own feet during a high school tennis practice;
3. giving myself a concussion from a head-over-heels faceplant when F tried to teach me how to ski.

No surprise, then, that I have never felt compelled to push my body to its limits. I have no desire to run a marathon. I doubt I’ll ever scale a mountain. I will never bike across the country.

And yet, ever since T’s birth, I have become completely in awe of my own body: its strength, its power, its resiliency.

Before the wild and quick labor that sped him into the world, I’m not sure I ever believed I was capable of birthing a child naturally. (My brothers can attest to both my innate wimpiness and my ability to whine about any pain inflicted on me.) I thought the idea of a drug-free delivery sounded incredible, but I suspected it was for stronger women than I. Even when I read the books and practiced the breathing and told friends I wanted to try for it, I was never convinced I actually had the strength in me to handle such intense pain. Without narcotics.

But then, suddenly, I was in the thick of it. After an hour spent laughing that we were once again googling “how to tell if your water broke” and another hour spent making hypothetical plans about “if I were really in labor,” everything changed. The every-fifteen-minutes contractions became every-five, and then every-two. The discomfort I could walk and talk through morphed into the pain I could only bear clinging to the wall. And I suddenly realized that if I were going to do this – if I were really going to push myself to the physical and mental limits of what I could endure – then I would have to turn completely inward and do this all myself.

So nothing that F did could help me. Poor man, everything he suggested was met with a hissing “GET OUT OF MY FACE.” Likewise I ignored all the nurses’ attempts to offer wise counsel once we finally (barely) made it to the hospital. The incredibly quick labor meant that our doula didn’t even arrive in time, so I never had to bother with shoeing her away.

Instead, I clung to that crazy blue birthing ball like my very life depending on it (as it did – and T’s as well). And my one lucid thought – which brings us, in a very roundabout way, back to the topic of Labor Day – went like this:

All I can see is this blue ball. And this blue ball is like the world. And all over the world, there are thousands of women who are laboring just like me right now. And God’s own Spirit is the one thing lifting all of us up. So all I have to do is breath in and breath out, and find that same Spirit, and that is the rhythm that will carry me through.

I fully embrace that it sounds crazy in retrospect. Maybe most thoughts that get women through labor are just that. But the clarity and power of that one line of thinking got me through the entire journey of birthing T. Solidarity with all the mothers around the world who were laboring along with me.

Last night, as Labor Day waned, I soaked in a hot bath – the rare luxury of the new mother – and thought about the labors we are called to in our vocations. Most of the time our work is run-of-the-mill: feed the kids, call the clients, take out the trash.

Yet once in a blue moon, our labor is extraordinary. Our strength, our resilience, our dedication surprises even ourselves. Our understanding of ourselves and our callings is deepened and sometimes transformed by such remarkable moments.

But what that crazy blue birthing ball reminded me of is the truth that we are joined, even in the exceptional moments, by thousands of others who are laboring on the same journey. Equal parts comforting and humbling to think that the One God who created each of us made us never to be alone. No matter what our labors look or feel like, they are always shared.

And I don’t know about you, but I’m frankly in awe of what we’re capable of.

(Even if you’d still never want to pick me first for your team in gym class.)

children, convents, and other commitments

Over the past few weeks, three of my friends from graduate school have announced plans to enter religious life.

None of these announcements were entirely shocking, given what I knew of each person and their journey thus far. But each decision brought its own elements of surprise. And to have three such announcements in such a short span of time was remarkable, to say the least. Few choices are more counter-cultural in our day and age.

One night over dinner, F and I talked about one friend’s decision to enter a religious community. As we marveled at parts of her choice and scratched our heads at others, I set down my fork (ever the signal of a grand proclamation to come) and declared as only a devil’s advocate could, “It’s just so PERMANENT! I mean, how does she know this is the right decision, the place she’s meant to be? How can she make this kind of commitment, for the REST OF HER LIFE?”

F smirked and lowered his gaze to my belly. “So you’re asking how she can make a lifelong commitment, without completely understanding what she’s getting into? Don’t you think it’s a little late for you to be asking that?”

I love when he calls me out.

Since then I’ve been thinking a lot about the commitments we are called to as part of our vocations. Some are permanent; others are for a season. We hope that the Big Ones – marriage, parenting, religious life – last for a lifetime. But we all know the messy reality of human beings proves that not to be true. So knowing that we could fly or fall, how do we take the leap at all?

Hope. Faith. Trust. Guts. Sheer stubbornness and determination.

Ultimately we all have to decide which voices we will listen to. Our own? God’s? The multitude around us? Every decision to make a lifelong commitment – to marry, to raise a child, to enter religious life – is inevitably faced by nay-sayers.

“Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce,” the cynic reminds the young couple eager to walk down the aisle.

“Celibacy is impossible and outdated,” the doubters challenge the seminarian.

“You’ll be responsible for that little brat for 18 years, you know,” the bitter joke to the pregnant. “And you’ll never sleep again.”

And yet no lifelong commitment can be lived out perfectly, since it is lived by imperfect people. The best we can hope to do is live faithfully as the person God created us to be.

Sad, then, that we sometimes tear each other down rather than build each other up. My vocation is strengthened – not diminished – by you living out yours as well. No one’s is holier or worthier; each is simply particular to the gifts we have been given, to the community to which we have been called.

Certainly we all have doubts – about our own vocations as well as others. Few things worse than sitting (or standing up) at a wedding where you’re not convinced the couple will make it. But once all the wise counsel has been given and the decision has been made, we owe it to each other to support each other as best we can, in the ways and the places we have chosen to answer the call.

Every great pastor was once a naive seminarian. Every wise grandmother was once a clueless new mother. Every CEO was once an awkward new hire.

And perhaps there’s something necessary about our naivete at the outset of answering our vocational calls. I may have no clue what I’m getting myself into with baby #2. And my dear friend who’s becoming a sister may have no idea what awaits her in community life.

But we need our hopes (and perhaps our ignorance) in order to take a leap of faith, trusting that a God who is bigger than our doubts and fears will have greater things in store for us than we can imagine on our own. If we knew everything that awaits us down these paths, we’d probably never say yes. But we’d miss the growth and joy and wisdom that far outweigh the struggles we’ll face.

So we say “I do.” We take the job. We take the new baby in our arms. We don the veil. And we hope each morning, even the dark and gloomy ones, that our response to the call can be as faithful as the One who called us.

Crazy? Sure. But hasn’t every decision that turned out to be good – to have another child, to enter religious life, to move halfway across the world to serve those in need – required at least a little bit of crazy?

next up, kindergarten? a long line of births

It’s been a bittersweet week in our household.

The World’s Best Babysitter – who nannied for us this summer and last – is getting married today. With her departure came our first week with the new sitter for the fall. She seems wonderful, and the week went smoothly. But still, she’s not (yet) The Best in our book, and S’s repeated prayers of “God bless C” at every meal remind me that he is missing his beloved sitter, too. We’re in a time of transition, of change upon us and waiting ’round the corner.

Yet I knew this change was coming all summer. It signaled the turning of a page, another chapter that had to be closed before the new baby could arrive. And just as I was on the brink of a life transition, so was the sitter. All summer long we chatted about rings and dresses, in-laws and cross-country moves, weddings and marriages. Our conversations took me back five years, and perhaps my pregnant waddling around our kitchen fast-forwarded her a few years as well.

Serendipitous, then, that in the midst of this week I unearthed a beautiful prayer that a friend from church sent me a few months ago. The last lines of Edward Hays’ “Psalm During Pregnancy” from his Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim leapt out at me as all these changes-to-come danced around my head:

Please help me, Holy Parent,

To protect my child who’s yours as well;

Bring this baby safely through this birthing

And any other birthings in life.

I realized as I prayed that The Birth which preoccupies my mind each day – the coming contractions and the promise of pushing, the excitement of meeting my child and the fears of what this awesome task will require – is just one in a long line of births I will be called to as a mother.

Guiding my children out the front door to the bus on their first day of school.

Pushing the bicycle back seat as they wobble down the driveway.

Helping them squeeze into the uncomfortable passage of junior high.

Watching the rises and falls of their joys and distresses through high school’s trials.

Releasing them into the wide world of first jobs, first heartache, first loss.

Cutting the cord as they drive off for the first time alone,

as they wave goodbye from the front step of their freshman dorm,

as they pack up the final box from their childhood bedroom,

as they walk down the aisle into someone else’s arms.

Of course, even in my hormonal whirlwind, I realize it’s not always as drastic as all that. We are forever tied to the people from whom we come. And yet I grow ever more aware that each stage of parenting means letting go in new ways.

We are called to birth – to struggle, to push, to give up – not once, but over and over again. Perhaps we come to fear the birthing less, but it still bring pain, leaves us aching.

“Kids need lots of people who love them.” A wise social worker once told me that, in a conversation lamenting the situation of a child who surely did not have enough people in his or her life who loved them. Her words have always stayed with me, forming my early years of parenting in ways she never expected an off-hand comment could.

Because her perspective helped me to realize that my job, my role, my vocation as a parent is not to keep my children in a bubble. Not to shield them from the world. But to help them learn to walk away from me. To explore all that life has to offer. To become the unique, independent, beautiful people God created them to be. To be able to leave me behind.

My kids don’t just need me. They need lots of people who love them. New babysitters, new teachers, new friends. Some that will delight, some that will disappoint. Goodbyes along the way, but always greeted by hellos around the corner.

These are the rhythms of life that start with the first signal of contractions. We push and we pull back; we struggle and we rest; we welcome and we worry; we fear and we rejoice. Sometimes the changes call for a gentle nudge, sometimes a teeth-gritted push with all our power. But the road ahead is long, and the learnings too rich and wild for me to hold my children back.

God must feel like that, too, watching us struggle with change. There is so much to be gained from every birthing, no matter how painful. Perhaps we are never Ready – not the one who births nor the one who is born. But in God’s time we find that we were ready all along.

Help me to gift this child with all the love I can,

Now during this time of pregnancy

And also at each stage of life when I am called

To set my baby free into fuller life.