Motherhood Found Me

I never thought I’d be Mom to four kids. When Glendon & I married, we expected to be parents one day but we were in no hurry. We were busy with camp ministry, enjoying the flexibility to hang out with friends, and travel.

Five years after we said our vows, I took a pregnancy test that confirmed recent suspicions. My hands trembled as the pink ‘+’ sign faded into view.

“It’s not safe to be on The Pill for more than 5 years,” she said.

“It’ll take at least a year for The Pill to get out of your system,” she said.

Three months after that conversation with my OB/GYN and our firstborn was growing within me. Sometimes the medical field behaves more like art than science.

We named our firstborn Selah, meaning “to pause”. Her life gave us a beautiful reason to slow down and let go of our carefully crafted life plans.

When Selah was 9 months old, we learned that baby #2 was on the way. Seriously, we aren’t rabbits and we know how ‘it’ works. Stunned by this news, we kept it a secret for 3 weeks before the bleeding began. Our wee one survived just 10 weeks in my womb before we released that tiny soul to God.

One year after that unexpected good-bye, we welcomed Jude, our beloved Rainbow Baby. In less than two years, I had carried three tiny souls and birthed two. I was tired and plagued by the darkness of winter and post-partum depression. In the next 6 months, Glendon & I decided to raise Selah and Jude without adding more littles. We were content, even relieved to close that chapter. I found great satisfaction in passing baby clothes along to friends and purging what the kids continued to outgrow.

Shortly after Jude was born, someone said to me, “You’ve got the million dollar family: one girl, one boy.” Excuse me, but um, WHAT THE WHAT? The ‘million dollar family’? I was really annoyed by that comment and bothered by the insinuation that the M.D.F. was our goal.

When Jude was about two years old, I began to explore a possible return to nursing school, to fulfill the dream I’d started before Selah joined us. I had finished a year of pre-requisites and my first year of nursing school when, for various, complex reasons (namely, a newborn with no support system), I opted not to finish. Knowing we were content with two kids allowed me to unearth this dormant opportunity.

Glendon and I prayed and wrestled for months over this possibility, looking at it from every angle and wondering, “Is this God’s best for our family in this season?” I met weekly with a counselor to process and sort through any unresolved issues as they related to this option. In those hard months, I began to see that I had no peace in moving forward with a nursing degree.

While out running during this confusing time, a Toby Mac song played on my iPod. As I huffed and puffed up one of the steepest parts of my route, his lyrics burned in my ears:

If You wanna steal my show

I’ll sit back and watch You go

If You got something to say

Go on and take it away

My life. My pride. My heart.

It’s all Yours now

Take it away

My fame. My feet. My family, my career.

Take it away

Take it away

It’s all Yours now

So take it away

It’s You I wanna live for

I had listened to that song countless times before but when I heard, “My family, my career, take it away”, I stopped running. Some runners can ugly cry and still keep the pace. I am not one of them. I was bent over, trying to get air between the heaving sobs. In that pivotal moment of surrender, a new prayer was born: Take it, God. Take it all. My nursing career, my beautiful family—it’s always been Yours. I see that more clearly now.

Not long after that unforgettable run, I began to think about our M.D.F. I asked questions like:

What do we want our family to look like?

What kind of life are we creating and is that what we want and/or should be creating?

How does our home reflect the values of Jesus?

And then a Voice seemed to whisper, “Adoption.” Of course. The pieces were starting to come together: the “no” to nursing school, the softening of our hearts to reconsider our family structure, the pivotal song.  I quietly questioned as I prayed about the next step, “Who are the most vulnerable children? Which birth family needs our family?” That led us to explore special needs adoption, specifically Down syndrome.

Eighteen months later, Samuel joined our family. His name reminds us that God hears our prayers, that he hears the prayers of first families and adoptees. Sam is our impish tot full of mischief and giggles.

Three kids! Great! We’re in a good place. This is it! We’re D.O.N.E. Done.

And then I swear I heard that familiar chuckle from heaven.

In the spring of 2016, we began to wonder if we were indeed D.O.N.E. We had moved to a different ministry and a new home with more living space and we found ourselves considering another adoption. A few months later, we heard from an acquaintance in a complicated situation. She wondered if we’d be willing to adopt her baby. In January 2017, we welcomed our youngest Eden, our adorable “delight.”

Today, we celebrate motherhood, a role that pursued me, even as I tried to outrun it. (I’ve never been a sprinter.) For years, fear, insecurity, and pride kept me from fully embracing it.

Motherhood has wrecked me in unexpected ways. It has rearranged my dreams, weathered my body, stolen my time, changed my sleep patterns, tested my emotional stamina, and increased my tendency to swear. Great selling points, right?

We could have made different choices. We could have said “yes” to the stereotypical M.D.F. We could have said “no” to special needs, to adoption, to beloved birth families in crisis. We could have opted for a less complicated life and we’d probably have been okay.

But I would have missed the richness that these four dear ones have brought to our home.

I can no longer imagine my life without motherhood. Four children bring a lot of chaos to my days and sometimes parenting is really, really hard. Parenting feels frustrating, messy, inconvenient, exhausting, impossible, and so dang loud some days that hiding in a closet with a book and a set of earplugs feels like the only logical way to manage.

Today, I’m making time to remember with gratitude how motherhood pursued and finally caught me. I feel like I’m the luckiest but also, if you need me, check the closet.

And knock loudly.

Would love to hear your motherhood stories! How did motherhood find you? How has motherhood changed you?

   Selah, Eden, Sam, & Jude in April 2017