Kiss Your Miracle

Many things have surprised me about parenthood. Today while Sky entertained Adam and me with a doo rag (thanks Julia!), I realized how much our little girl makes us laugh. And once she realizes that she’s the one responsible for it, there’s no stopping her. She goes on and on and we end up laughing so hard our faces hurt. It’s quite the contrast from our pre-parent days. Sure, we laughed with each other then. But the sadness of infertility was always with us, even when we’d pushed it to the back of our minds. Home is a different place now – noisier and more chaotic and always on the messy side – and we love it this way.

At the same time, I’m nervous about having our second baby. I’m thrilled. But scared, too. Days when Sky demands all my attention I wonder how I’ll manage with another one. I wonder when I’ll sleep. Sky does great at night, but often naps an hour or less. When I’m up with a newborn at night and up with Sky all day, how will I function? I love sleep. I need sleep. For the first few months after Sky’s birth, I lived in survival mode. I knew overall that motherhood was just what I always wanted. But I still spent many of those early days at home fighting the baby blues, struggling to keep perspective. And when I really and truly remember that time I start to panic at the thought of doing it again, this time with a one-year-old along for the ride.

I feel funny admitting that. I hope I don’t sound ungrateful. And I know that millions of women all over the world cope with a lot more than two kids at once. My own mom has seven. My aunt has seven, too. Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me. How can I want more children and still find myself intimidated by it?

But recently I discovered something that helps me whenever I start to get anxious. I picture my parents and my brothers and sisters sitting around the dinner table. I think about each person, and the way we’re all different, but how we still get along, and how much laughing goes on when we’re all together. I can’t imagine my family with even one person missing and I’m so glad my parents didn’t just focus on how exhausting and expensive it is to have babies. From the beginning they saw each of us as individual people, created by God to be part of our family, but with our own separate lives, too. And that’s how I want to see Sky and our next baby and any other babies God decides to give us – not as my full-time job or even just as my children, but as growing, changing individuals with a God-ordained destiny far bigger than simply enlarging my family. On days like today, when Sky makes us laugh and we get to see a little bit more of who God has made her to be, it’s not so difficult to do.

This morning while Skylar and I ate breakfast, we listened to one of Pastor James MacDonald’s Walk in the Word podcasts.

Digression: Rereading that sentence makes me laugh. It makes it sound like we sat peacefully at the table together, drinking tea and eating muffins while listening to a sermon. I actually feed Sky breakfast while she runs around the kitchen and plays. She’s anti-high chair these days and letting her roam free in between bites is the only way I can get her to eat anything at all. I asked my mom about it one day and she said, “Don’t make food a battle. She’s thirteen months old. Do what works.” I love my mom.

So breakfast is typically chaotic, but I can still usually half-listen to a podcast at the same time. This morning Pastor James was talking about attitude. He said that God doesn’t usually take away the trials that we face, but that he helps us through them. You only have to look at the hardship all around us to see the truth in that. People everywhere, including Christians, deal with incredibly difficult circumstances, sometimes for years with no end in sight. I like it when church people acknowledge the pain and suffering in the world, when we even admit how confusing it can be when God doesn’t remove the pain despite our many prayers.

But as I thought about Pastor James’ statement, I couldn’t help but think of our infertility. As we walked through those years, I wondered if a life without children might be God’s plan for us. I cried many tears over our infertility and I usually felt God’s comfort and love in those dark moments. But I never felt like he promised me a baby. I had no idea what the future would hold. Then one day I found myself surprisingly – shockingly! – pregnant. And just like that, infertility became an enclosed section of time in our past.

It’s true; many times in life God doesn’t take away our pain. But sometimes he does. Sometimes he does it dramatically, miraculously. He is God Almighty and nothing is too hard for him. He can change a person’s destiny in the wink of an eye. And sometimes he keeps changing it. If you’d told me during our infertility that within a year of our first child’s birth, I’d be pregnant again, I would have been speechless. To think that I could go from wondering if I’d ever be a mother to wondering how I would handle two little ones at the same time is still beyond me. The infertility years were long. But then all of a sudden, God changed everything.

I don’t know what you’re facing today or what God has in mind for your future. He might not take away your particular pain until heaven. But maybe he’s about to do something huge in your life, in a way you’ve never imagined. Sometimes I think it’s good for us to let our minds wander, to remember with a sense of anticipation just how much he is capable of accomplishing.

The other day I gave Sky a bath in the morning, then brushed her wet hair back, and got her dressed. I’d just started to get myself ready when I heard her laughing. I turned around and there she was, bouncing on her little plastic ball like she was in a Pilates class or something. I laughed with her and took a picture. But when I looked at it later, all I could see were the bruises on her forehead. She’s done a lot of falling lately. Sometimes her body gets going a little too fast for her legs, and if she’s holding something at the time, she doesn’t always catch herself. A couple days ago she hit the tile with her head so hard that Adam and I spent the rest of the day watching her for signs of a concussion.

Like every mom, I hate it when my baby gets hurt. And a bruised forehead is just the beginning. I wonder what she’ll face as she grows. Will kids be mean to her? Will friends reject her at some point? Will a boy she loves break her heart? What if she deals with infertility one day like I did? I suppose I should keep in mind all that the Bible has to say about adversity, that it builds character and it’s God’s way to get our attention and draw us close to him. I know those things are true of the hardship in my own life. But the mother side of me looks at my little girl and just wants to say no, no, no. Please God, let her somehow learn life’s lessons without the pain.

Earlier this week I had a break from my usual routine at home with Sky. My mother-in-law Terry volunteered to take her for the entire day so I could get some work done. I’m doing a three-week training session for an online grading job and I’ve also started writing articles on-line to earn a little extra money. But during a typical day with Adam at work, my only computer time is whenever Sky naps, which is sometimes just 40 minutes – barely enough time to get started. So when Terry offered to watch Sky at her house I quickly accepted. From 9am until 4:30pm on Tuesday I had the entire house to myself.

I think I’ve been home without Sky two times so far since she was born. It was definitely a weird feeling to walk through the door by myself after dropping her off with her grandma. But in my mind a clock was ticking and I didn’t want to waste a minute. I sat right down to work and just like that, three hours passed. I stopped for fifteen minutes to make myself a big, fat bowl of oatmeal and then went back to work. By 3:30pm I’d accomplished even more than I’d planned. I could also feel my brain starting to shut down, so I decided my work day was over.

I stood up and stretched. I cleaned up the kitchen, then straightened the living room. I looked down at Sky’s toys, still stacked in the corner exactly like they’d been at 9am. Suddenly, my mind filled with questions about her. What was Sky doing just then? What had she eaten for lunch? Had she pooped? Did she miss me? What should I do with myself for the next hour? For a while I just stood there. Then I decided to lie down on the bed and read. But I couldn’t concentrate. I looked at the clock every five minutes.

At 4:30pm Adam walked through the door with Sky in his arms. I immediately grabbed her and kissed her sweet face all over, asking her a million questions about her day. She squealed and squirmed to be put down. “Well,” I said as she took off running. “Okay then.”

Later that night as I prayed for her before bed, I realized how much less tired I felt than usual. It had been nice to have a break, nice to have the chance to miss my baby. And I found myself looking forward to tomorrow, when I’d get to have her all to myself again.

To all you stay-at-home moms without family around (thanks again, Terry!), I hope you can afford to splurge on a babysitter. And not just for a date-night with your hubby. But for yourself. So you can accomplish something you’ve been wanting to do without any interruptions. Or maybe just so you can lie down on the bed and read. It might feel a bit odd, but that’s okay. Motherhood is a job that doesn’t really have an end. Breaks are good.

Sky is currently obsessed with books.    She’s never been a sit-still kind of girl, and the only cuddles I usually get are right after naptime when she’s still half-asleep. The rest of the time she’s on the move. But lately when we sit on the floor for playtime, she’ll bring me a book and then climb into my lap. I typically get through about half the words on each page before she’s flipping to the next one, and our little “reading” session usually lasts about 30 seconds before she jumps up to grab a different book. But still, my little girl loves books. I keep telling myself that she’s only thirteen months old and she’s going to change a lot over the years. But for now, she loves books. And as a go-to-the-library-once-a-week, total book nerd myself, I have a question for all you experienced mommies. Is it too early for me to get really, really excited?