Looking back

I know that life has been incredibly hard for the last several months. I know that birth was excruciating. I remember being in hospital for Willow's sickness and how that impinged upon my life's freedoms for those weeks. I remember the pain of bending down after I reached the halfway mark in pregnancy. I remember the throwing up. I remember the exhaustion.

But despite all of this, I can look and see my pregnant friends around me, and think back with fondness at my days of pregnancy.

You see, my little girls just keep becoming more and more independent. Which i know is my goal as a mother, but it's still hard to release them. Not long ago, Willow needed my comfort to close her eyes to sleep. Not long before that, her first cry was heard by Craig and I as I birthed her in the hospital bathroom. And not much before that, she was teasing us day and night with false labour pains for weeks on end until I was thoroughly exhausted by what could have been her first day into the world.

But all of these troubles pale and fade. Their smiles are shared, heads start being lifted high to view this exciting world before them. And not long later, they start repeating your sentences back to you, so you can hear for yourself how stupid you sound.

It's just a beautiful existence, being poured out as a mother. No wonder we share their excitement as they learn a new skill. These little people have become what we spend almost all of our days listening out for. Tenderly nurturing. Analysing their every move and curbing tantrums. Noticing the cry that means "if I don't get fed now, I'll be torture for the rest of the day" or preempting a fall from a height that just must be climbed and explored.

Being a mother is an existence of continual change. An ebb and flow of hard times.

I find that just as I accept not having a scrap of time for myself to even cut my fingernails, I get it back again.

Like now, for instance. Here I sit after months of holding my youngest daughter from 7pm till 9/10pm lest she scream from separation, without her in these arms. I am typing with 2 hands!!! And I have to say that although I do feel thoroughly grateful for the freedom, a small hint of pain is present. She no longer needs me. She doesn't need me to hold her to sleep anymore. She can now do this all by herself. Independence has begun, and to be honest, had begun as soon as she was conceived.

So I look back tonight at the year that has been. A year of feeling exhausted 24/7. A year of just giving birth, and then embracing a new life within me only 6 months later. A year where I have been poured out with all the love I have, only to be filled with God's love again, so I can again, pour it out. A year or more of serving foremost, my Lord. And a year of being emptied out in caring for my children.

And I look back and realise that it's getting easier. It's getting easier to deny myself. Sacrifice is becoming more of what I remember, so I long less for the days of my own freedom. I just hope that as time continues, and the burden gets larger as our family gets larger, that my Lord will continue to provide me with the patience and strength that is needed to pour His love into these little lives so they grow up to know Him.