A day for mothers

Exactly one year ago on mother's day I went to church to be with my momma. I had told her a few months before that we were having trouble getting pregnant and that we had been trying for a while. She cried with me and prayed with and for me. She was part of my support system when I needed her most. She always has been.

 She does what mother's do, they worry about, cry for, pray for, sit with, listen and converse with, help find solutions with, spend time with, play with, laugh with and love their children.

  I'm starting to experience those things more and more with Henry as each day passes and it's making me realize I have some mighty big shoes to fill.

 My mother is one of my best friends and biggest cheerleaders, not to mention she is one heck of a prayer warrior and knows how to ooze optimism and show love better than anyone I have ever met.

 She's my momma and I can't get enough of her. We are so very close and I love that, because sometimes you just need your momma. And the past few years I have needed mine alot.

So as I sat in church to honor her last year I was silently going through the aching pain of wanting to be a mother myself. A poem was read at the start of service to honor mothers and mentioned the different kinds of mothers, ones with littles, ones with older children, children who have left home as adults, who were still in their momma's tummies yet to be born, children who had already gone to heaven or were brought home with their adoptive mommas and even gave a nod to mothers who had lost babies before they were born and those who were going through infertility trying to become mothers. I appreciate that poem because it mentioned me, the type of mother I was at that time. Where the baby had grown in my heart but not yet in my womb. When they mentioned the yearning "mother" I started bawling, not like weeping or teary eyed but full. on. ugly. sob. It was embarrassing and uncontrollable. I think I am pretty tough on a normal basis but what we went through to get Henry here brought me to my knees. I couldn't help but cry and let it out and unfortunately it was in front of the entire congregation. I was just screaming inside. "God, I'm right here! Pick me, please pick me! I won't be a perfect mom, but I want to try my very best! GOD PLEASE LET ME BE A MOM!"  And my momma.....my momma felt it too. She was sad for me. I could see it in her eyes and feel it in her hands as she held mine in that moment...and my momma, I know she was praying then. This year I sat in church with my momma and cried again. But this time as I stared at the peaceful face of my sleeping son. Little did I know last year that I would become pregnant 2 months later and carry that baby to full term and get to sit and weep in church holding my miracle in my hands. The one that was an answer to my prayers that day (and many many others).

Taylor's Mom

I feel so incredibly blessed. So blessed to have my prayers answered and so blessed to be a mother.

  It is the single greatest gift I have ever been given. It's not always easy but it's always amazing.

 The way he looks at me, the way he smiles when he sees me come up to him, the way he holds my fingers or lays on my chest for his nap, the way he nuzzles into my neck when I pick him up and the way that sometimes when he cries, only I can make it better.

He has already made me a better person. I am more patient, more relaxed, more loving, more hopeful, and much much more happy. He is the best thing to have ever happened to me.

So naturally I expected the sermon to be about mothers and at first it wasn't. Or at least it didn't seem to have anything related to mother's day but for me it was very fitting as I am just starting this motherhood thing. It was about hope.  Our pastor talked about how God uses you for his glory. He gives you currency to use your "stuff" to give hope and have hope. Not possess stuff and lose hope because of it. I applied that to my life in that he gave me the challenge of infertility (my "stuff") to give hope and have hope for others going through it because I know that I lost hope alot during our journey. I got it back at times, but it felt like one step foward and 2 steps back sometimes and in those times it  was hard to keep hope quite often. I want to keep hope and prayers for those who are losing it themselves, I want to use my stuff to help them get through theirs. They don't have to know it but I want to have hope for them even silently. The bible tells us to forget our past and to press on for God. To have glory in our sufferings in the past because our sufferings  produce character and character produces perseverance and perseverance produces hope. When you look at it that way, it makes sense. I certainly never thought that dealing with infertility would give me character but it sure did show how much I can persevere and how much I still clung enough to hope that we would get our baby someday.

Our pastor also told us the bible says that it's necessary to stop living a life of secrets. If you don't embrace the suffering and you hide it, you'll never be able to work on forward perseverance and press on and if you can't press on, you lose your hope. I think this is how I feel about blogging about infertility. It's my "secret" that I am embracing and by sharing I am working on forward progress for myself and maybe for others. When all is said and done I may not have the most great faith at times ( I know for a fact that my faith was constantly in question trying to have a baby) but I do have faith in a great God. That is the important part.

 I know he answered my prayers to become a mother and I am so so grateful to him for that. It really is amazing looking at things in retrospect and seeing they happened exactly as they should have. It's really hard for me to accept that God gives you some hard stuff in order to build your character and make you stronger but he does. He is a faithful God, a listening God and a God who has plans for us that will eventually unfold. But in the mean time he wants us to trust him and to lean on him.....I'm still a work in progress, I'm learning everyday to trust him. And just as I am learning to figure this whole motherhood thing out, I am also learning about being a child. A child of God.

And this year...it feels good. Only happy tears.