Newly Born
In this season of newness, I feel just as fragile as my little baby.
The journey of pregnancy for the first time was beautiful, extremely difficult for me, and unlike anything I have ever experienced. At the end of that long journey, my prize was yet again more newness. The birth process was transformative in every sense of the word. It expanded my conceptualization of beauty and joy in this world and took it to new levels. And again, at the end of that remarkable experience of birth, more newness: we got a sweet little one to learn to love and care for.
In being an infant mother, that is, someone who is freshly born into motherhood, I was shocked by how much was thrown at me at once. I couldn’t help but relate to my sweet little one, who was startled by all of the new things in her world as well. She was taking in, for the first time, light, sounds, fresh air, different people, how to eat, how to sleep, all in this new world. I watched her struggle and flail and find comfort spots to settle into for a moment, and then adjust to more discomfort—the very process of learning to live. I couldn’t help but feel as if God has us both on a parallel process: Mommy and baby as symbiotic beings in a world full of newness. I was shocked by how much information, opinions, and data were thrown at me. It caused me to flail and cry too, until I found some comfort spots of my own. I would look down at her fragile body, and I would feel it was a perfect reflection of my interior world at the moment.
As we continue to grow together, I am struck by how brightly our sour souls light up when our eyes catch one another in encounters in love. To be seen and rejoiced in by the one who is with you in all the highs and lows is a true encounter. When my smile makes her face light up, and hers mine, we share moments of joy in our parallel paths that bond us beyond genetics. When I hold her when she cries, and I allow myself to feel the struggle with her too, we are connecting in a place that feels deeply human and deeply authentic. It’s a kind of unearthed tender love that I have never experienced before.
My prayer at this point in motherhood is that we continue to honor that our pilgrimages so closely mirror one another. Similar, but different. As she is growing into the woman God made her to be in all of these early seasons of her life, I am too. I am learning to be a mother, a wife, and a disciple first and foremost, but just like her, I am learning to relate, to fail, and to love all at the same time. It’s all learning, and it’s all human.
I hope to mother her from this place. I am not the mother that has it all together and constantly knows how to perfectly respond to her and everyone else, and I never will be. I am a mother who is walking a road that is different from hers, yet parallel. May the lord grant us both mercy with one another as we walk along these different yet resembling seasons on our pilgrimages to Him, and may we continue to savor the sweet moments of encounter that are pure reflections of Him.