When the doctor placed our son into my arms for the first time no one told me how deeply I would love him. Or maybe they did and I just couldn’t comprehend. JP and I were completely smitten. We laugh now at our conversation during our drive home from the hospital.
“Can you believe how fast these people are driving?”
“What’s wrong with them? They are positively insane. Complete lunatics.”
Looking back I’m sure JP didn’t drive over 35 miles an hour, so careful was he with our precious newborn cargo.
I felt the same deep love twice more in my life—the day Kylie was born, and then Ashton.
No one told me how much that love would grow, day after day, year after year, despite days that made me question my sanity, or filled me with the kind of bone-deep worry only a mother can experience, or sometimes made me want to run away.
No one told me how deep motherhood made you feel.
No one told me about the often difficult transition that begins in a young woman who’s used to caring only for herself and now must care for another human being.
Every day.
No one told me that fighting selfishness would sometimes be hard and that I would have days I longed for a slice of peace and solitude. No one told me that sometimes I would get more frustrated and angry than I ever had in my pre-children days. No one told me I would have to confront ugliness in myself that never had occasion to rise to the surface before.
No one told me that sometimes I would feel like a failure.
No one told me that having children would slow me down in ways that sometimes frustrated me, but usually caused me to pause long enough to enjoy things I previously missed. Slow walks. Lunch time sandwiches shaped into teddy bears with a child’s favorite cookie cutter. Rainy day huddles on the porch looking like a mother hen with her chicks, belting out “It’s raining, it’s pouring…” Bedtime snuggles, kisses and prayers. Morning hair brushing and big red bows and lots of stopping to pick up dropped pacifiers or tie untied shoes.
No one told me that I would come to relish the slowness once the business crept in.
No one told me how many miles I’d put on my SUV. No one told me how often I would squeeze in errands between soccer practices, orthodontist visits and football games. No one told me how much fun shopping for prom dresses would be. Or, on occasion, how frustrating. No one told me sitting on a bathroom floor, teaching my daughters the finer points of applying makeup, could be a holy place of communion, where happy memories were made. No one told me the teenage years could actually be really fun.
No one told me how much my kids would teach me to laugh. No one told me the noises made by tiny people, then big people, would come to be so sweet. No one told me my favorite sound would be my children’s laughter. Even now. Especially now.
No one told me that in trying to forge their character my own character would be forged. No one told me that their neediness would make me aware of my own. No one told me that my children would teach me more about life than any college professor ever could. No one told me that grace and forgiveness would become real because they found a place to be fleshed out in our home, rather than simply talked about at church.
No one told me how being a parent would deepen my dependence on God.
No one told me that their hurts would be my hurts and their happiness, my joy. No one told me how fiercely I’d want to protect them from anyone or anything that would cause them pain. No one told me how hard it would be to let experience be their teacher and that sometimes I would need to remain on the sideline, even when everything in me wanted to play the role of Mother Bear.
No one told me how important dinner conversations would turn out to be or that carpool conversations could be temples of learning every bit as important as an AP class. No one told me how much they would actually listen to what their dad and I said, even when we thought they weren’t listening.
No one told me how deeply they would pattern their own values after ours.
No one told me in the beginning it would seem odd to have a child with me. All. The. Time. No one told me eventually it would seem odd not to.
No one told me I would one day notice a mom stopped next to me at a red light and the sight of her teenage daughter seated beside her would fill me with a sad envy because my passenger seat was empty.
No one told me it’s just as hard to send a child off to college after their first Christmas break or to say good-bye after parent’s weekend (like we did two days ago), as it is when you set up their dorm room in the fall.
No one told me how much I would like my children, as well as love them. No one told me the tiny, fragile infants that were placed in my arms would one day grow up to be my most favorite people. No one told me how well they would turn out and how proud they would make their dad and me.
Back then, all we could do was try our best, love our best and pray our best.
No one told me because no one really could. Only life, lived one day at a time, teaches you these things.
No one told me that by giving them life I would find my own. No one told me how deeply I could love.
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Oh my… I am reading this with tears rolling down my cheeks. So very true. So much expression in your words, so beautifully written. Thank you for putting the emotion and privilege of being a mom into such lovely words.
Best. Post. Ever. Written.
Wow! Beautifully said! Recently as our daughter was getting ready to go back to college to begin her third year, I Broke down in tears. My husband looked at me and in a very sweet way said ” you wanted to have kids”. I said yes, but…… No one told me how hard it would be when they move away. I always dreamed of starting a family but never dreamed about when they would leave. No one told me I might not spend every birthday and every holiday with my child. No one told me how quiet the house would be. As hard as it is, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Our children are God’s greatest gifts!
Thank You Donna for sharing !
Had to keep blinking the tears back and swallowing the lump in my throat! I can so relate to the realizations and the emotions you so eloquently expressed. Thanks for pouring out your heart and putting words to the feelings in my own.