As we officially transition out of the “little kid” phase and into a new season of parenting, I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve been learning about faith through motherhood.
Old Enough
My children are old enough to sleep in beds without rails, but not so old that they don’t run to my room the moment their eyes open.
My daughter’s old enough to sleep through most nights, but not so old that she won’t appear at my bedside at dawn with a pencil, begging to learn her name in cursive.
My son is old enough to make his needs known and be reasoned with (unless he’s tired or hungry), but not too old to shake me awake, demanding my small bedside book light. He points it at his stuffed turtle and says, “Say ahh!” like a good doctor.
As we all lie there in the big bed together, their father—my love—and I flank them like bookends. The grey light of the October morning creeps slowly around the curtain’s corners. I sigh. That familiar cocktail of feelings rushes in: exhausted joy chased with guilt. My need for them, the weight of their need for me, sits like two fifty-pound school children, squarely on my chest.
When my daughter wasn’t old enough to hold her head up or sleep anywhere but my arms, I had a recurring nightmare. I’d dozed off rocking her; she was trapped in the blankets. The first time I felt the maternal instinct take over so completely, I woke up digging like some desperate creature. She slept soundly in her bassinet. The room was still, the white noise roared.
Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.1
These words from the book of Isaiah: the heaviness, the literal leaking of love, the lonely, vulnerable, bloody, animal life of a mother. This, too, is God’s image?
I have known what it is to come to the end of my remembering. The whoosh of their heartbeats on the sonogram still sings in my empty womb, their DNA still swims in my bloodstream. I’ve found a seven-pound body impossibly heavy to hold.
All this time, I’d been tempted to picture God as a flawed, human father, detached and stern; or a human mother, waiting for me to be old enough to take care of myself. Like God longed for her body back, to finally wean me, that there was a limit to her and I had reached it.
Now, in our family bed, I count the vertebrae of my son’s spine. I smell my daughter’s head. I run my fingers along my two-time C-section scar. I let myself need God like I need them, like they need me, in total dependence, access only a child can have.
Once, my son, after a long day at school, protested sleep because he hadn’t “put his eyes on me enough that day.”
These children, so unashamed of their need for their mother—this longing, the only thing they’re sure of.
That October morning, I let myself love God like a mother.
Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.
I brought to God my unreasonable, tired, and hungry heart. I woke the One who never slumbers or sleeps with the most frivolous request. In the collapse of my children’s bodies against mine, I released to God the full weight of my belonging.
I’m practicing running to God as soon as my eyes open.
When I find myself begrudging the cursive lessons or the 3 AM snuggles, I look around at the hard and the holy.
God is there, at my bedside, in the mess, before I call, mothering me.
It was God who helped this mother remember: there is no such thing as “old enough.”
We never stop needing the One who loved us into being.
If this one resonates, could you share it with someone who needs encouragement? Dropping a comment or a ❤️ on the post also helps new readers find us.
Thanks for reading. I’m so glad you’re here.
<3,
Merideth
We have a picture like that, and it’s the best!
And beautiful poem!!
What a fun family photo!