mothers Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

Better With You Here

The plan for the day improved greatly with one phone call Jeff made this morning. He needed to pick up some building materials from a friend, a friend who happens to have three giant trampolines lined up in a row in his backyard. The first one is directly under his roof.

You have no idea how fun it is to have three trampolines lined up in a row just inches from the corner of a roof unless you’ve tried it, or unless you’re under the age of ten and can imagine it.

“I’ll tell ya what,” Gary said when Jeff asked if he could drop by. “You can come on over as long as you bring the family and stay for some lemonade.”

It was settled.

The only trouble was, I’ve been fighting some fierce kid-germs, and they’re still “winning me.” I thought about this as Jeff announced the plan to the kids.

“Yahoo!” they screamed. “We can jump on the trampolines!”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to go,” I said through my stuffy nose. “I’ll probably have to stay home.”

“Even better!” one of the children shouted gleefully.

The words sliced through the air and made a direct hit.

Even better.

Even better if you don’t come.

Even better without you.

It was said carelessly because even very small children can toss heavy words about as if they weigh nothing at all, as if they mean nothing at all.

But they meant something to me, and I felt myself bleeding out right there in the middle of the kitchen because those words cut deep.

Those words were not the words of my child; they are the words of my Enemy.

They are dark words, and deep like the depths of the ocean. When all the house is asleep and the moon brings in a tide of self-doubt, I feel myself getting sucked into the currents and drowning into that ocean. It tells me that I am not enough, that I have messed it up, that I am not cut out for this. It gurgles up in me and I hear the rush of it in my ears: they all would be better off without me.

My child does not know that I have heard these words before, and often, in my own heart and my own mind. He does not know how they leave me clinging to the rocks and chanting to myself, “It is not true. It is not true.”

This child does not know how it cuts me to hear in broad daylight the words I fight in the dark.

Those words hang in the air between us and for an awful moment, I am swept out to sea by a sudden wave and I cannot breathe. It is true. All my failings, all my shortcomings, all my inadequacies: every single one of them is true. They would all be better off with someone else.

But wait…

They are not true, and they are not the words of my child. They are the words of my Enemy. I come up for air, grab hold of a bit of craggy rock, and see it for what it is. How dare my Enemy use my child’s lips to utter his lies! How dare he tread on that holy ground.

Because this calling is not my own. I did not bear these children out of my own desire, nor was I given them out of my own goodness or ability. A thousand women with empty arms deserved this more. I know it. I think of Mother’s Day, looming large on my calendar, and I weep for them because I feel so undeserving of the gift they desire. Why me? Why not them?

It is a whirlpool that easily sucks me in. I can drown in my inadequacies and I can grieve the probability that another mother could do it better, but it doesn’t erase the fact that God gave me a name I did not earn.

He called me mother.

It is a grace-calling. And grace-callings are the hardest ones to answer, I find, because they never-ever-never-ever fit right.

Because if it fit right, it wouldn’t be grace.

If it fit right, it wouldn’t leave me stumbling and tripping over my own mantle like some kind of misfit, or wrestling with doubts and uncertainties like a kid who can’t figure out how to put on her own dress.

If it fit right, I wouldn’t have to trust that God knew best, despite how I perform…

…despite what my kids think of me…

…despite the fact that I am impatient…

…and also selfish.

Despite the fact that I can’t get my arms in my own sleeves–despite all of it.

I was not called to be a mother because I was going to be good at it.

I was called to be a mother because God could make something good out of it, despite me.

I am wet and dripping, half-drowned and inglorious, yet God bends to whisper in my ear,

“It’s better with you here.”

I struggle to believe it.

It is better with you here because I AM the One who called you.

That is the truth I need to hear, and often, a truth that speaks in a whisper but shouts above the waves.

It is better with you here.

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: 41

Fathers and Daughters: 100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood {23}

My dad died when I was not much older than she is now. I think of it in moments like this when he puts his arms around her shoulders and squeezes her to his side.

I think of it when he calls her Fluffer-Puff and asks her about her day, or when she’s tucked into her bed with a book and he sits down by her feet and talks to her in his unhurried way. He is never as hurried as I am.

I think of it when he builds the Swing of Awesome because he knows she’ll love it. It’s constructed out of a curvy old bike handle and a length of chain strung way up high in a sprawling tree. He pushes her out over the field where the bank slides away and her giggles fly away into the sky.

I can’t watch.

I think of my dad when her dad buys her bread sticks because she likes them, or when he let her have chickens even though he did not want chickens. But she did.

I think of it when he asks me how he can pray for her better, and I am reminded of how my own father prayed for me. It is not even a memory. It is part of my making.

And it minsters to me so deeply, the fatherhood of my husband toward our children. I see in him the love my own father had for me, and I am grateful. I see in him the love the heavenly Father has for me, and I am amazed.

I watch them together and I am thankful that she has him. I am thankful that her father’s love will lead her to understand the love of the Father. I know my husband is securing her affections toward the things that are good and holy, pure and righteous, beautiful and lovely. My daddy did the same thing for me, and if the story repeats itself as I think it will, she will not be able, after, to choose anything less.

So on this beautiful day of motherhood, I am thankful for the ministry of fatherhood. I am thankful that God has given us a picture of Himself that I can’t see in my mirror. I am thankful that I can see it in him.

100 Beautiful Days of Motherhood: Faith {12}

This is a reprint of a post I wrote for Mother’s Day 2012. Come back tomorrow and see how God wrote the rest of the story using a reluctant mother with a little Faith.

It was the day before our first wedding anniversary when a home pregnancy test confirmed my fear: I was pregnant. The second pink line was so faint, I almost convinced myself it wasn’t there. But when I walked out of the bathroom and showed my husband, his face lit up and he wrapped me up in a huge hug. “Baby! This is such great news!” he beamed.

I burst into tears. It most certainly was not great news, and I was hurt by his excitement. I wanted his emotions to match mine; instead, they revealed the ugliness of my disappointment and fear, the ugliness of a woman who didn’t want to be pregnant with her own child.

It’s not that I didn’t like kids. I adored them. I had worked with street kids and orphans. I paid my way through college by being a nanny to a wonderful little boy. Everywhere I went, I drew kids to me like a magnet. But I didn’t want my own. I never had. I did not dream about being pregnant or holding a baby or decorating a nursery.

Everyone always said that when the time was right, I would want to have kids, and I believed them, partly because it was easier. It’s a solitary thing to be a woman who does not want children. There’s something abnormal about it. “I should try harder to want children,” I reasoned and tried to muster up some maternal instincts by sheer will-power. I wanted those feelings. They just weren’t there.

I held on the hope that one day, my desires would change so I could stop feeling like a foreigner in my own gender. Surely one day, I would want to have my own children. Someday, I wouldn’t have to explain that I didn’t hate children. One day, I would feel like a normal woman.

I did not expect to get pregnant first. I did not expect to have a baby before I was ready to be a mother.

A few weeks later, a blood test confirmed the home pregnancy test. Soon it became obvious that my stomach wasn’t flat anymore. I couldn’t quite fit into my jeans. I stood in the dressing room of Motherhood Maternity with a belly form under my shirt, trying on clothes, while tears streamed down my face. I walked out without buying a thing.

An ultrasound showed the baby was a girl, but I didn’t want anyone to know. Somehow, it made it worse to verbalize the fact that we were having a girl, not just a baby, but a girl. Deep down in the darkness of my heart, I hoped I would miscarry the baby. A friend of ours had lost her baby, and I wondered to God why He would take that baby, that loved baby, instead of mine.

Another couple we knew was struggling with infertility, and we had to call and tell them that we had gotten pregnant without even trying and I had to pretend to be happy because I couldn’t imagine how much it would hurt them to hear that I didn’t want this baby. I didn’t understand why God chose us and not them. Why not them?

The months passed. We found a hand-me-down crib and set it up in our walk-in closet because our one-bedroom apartment was too small to accommodate a baby. I came home from work and saw it there up against the back wall between my husband’s clothes and mine, and I bawled. I wanted to run away. I didn’t know where to go but I didn’t want to be in my own body anymore. I didn’t want to live my own life anymore, but how could I undo it, once it had been done? Something fundamental had changed and I could not put it back. I could not reverse it. I could not run away from it. I wanted to accept it, to embrace it, to be happy about it, but I couldn’t.

I couldn’t be happy because to be happy meant to let go. I was afraid to let go. I was afraid of what God might do if I let Him, as if my fighting and struggling could keep Him from doing it anyway. I was afraid that accepting this baby might make it okay, and I wasn’t ready for it to be okay.

The thing is, I did love children. I loved them so much, I couldn’t tolerate the idea of giving a child anything less than my best, of loving her any less than she deserved. I knew what would be required of me to be the kind of mother I knew I needed to be, and I wasn’t ready to do it yet. I wasn’t willing to do it yet.

But God has a funny way of taking our wills and conforming them to His own. He has a funny way of using babies to shake things up, of using the small things to take down the big things and to bring to light the stuff that shouldn’t be there at all.

The sun was just beginning to come up when we drove to the hospital to deliver the baby. I couldn’t stop shaking. I shook when they prepped me for surgery and I shook on the operating table. Even with a system full of drugs, I couldn’t keep my teeth from chattering. I saw a bright red, squirmy baby pee all over the doctor. My husband named her Faith.

Faith.

It doesn’t take much faith to move mountains, and I certainly didn’t have much faith. I couldn’t even pray for more. But my husband did. He loved me through the ugliness and encouraged the tiny glimmers of love he saw in me. Somewhere in the depths of a very dark heart, that very little love began to grow. It was not immediate and it was not easy, but the more it grew, the more it wanted to grow, until one day, I realized how fiercely I loved this child of mine.

Then I cried. I cried every time I held her. I cried while she slept. I looked in at her and my heart broke because I had not wanted her. I cried because God had trusted her to me anyway, even though I was not ready or willing to open my heart to her. I cried because something I had never had but always wanted was slowly awakening in me, and I did not deserve it.

Over the course of the years, I have grown into motherhood, but it has not been an easy journey. Every year, when the Mother’s Day cards come out on the shelves and the local florists get a surge of business, I feel a sense of sadness. It is still difficult to accept the words “you’re a good mom” because I remember when I wasn’t. Some days, I’m still not.

On this beautiful day, I am reminded that I did not want this life. And I am so thankful I did not get what I wanted.