Tag: adoption

Mothers Day

This Mother’s Day

Hannah

I remember being in church the first Mother’s Day after burying my daughter and not being able to contain my sobs as the pastor shared a special tribute to mothers, and I didn’t feel like celebrating at all because I had stood at the edge of eternity and watched a piece of my motherhood be torn from my arms in an instant.

I remember the Mother’s Day after my first miscarriage and how I grieved over having been thrilled to add another arrow to our quiver, only to watch that dream bleed out through the cracks in my heart.

I remember the Mother’s Days during our seasons of infertility, and how I fought to not entertain bitterness toward the expecting mamas in my life because I was crippled by the thought of never being able to expand our family.

I remember the Mother’s Day following our season of foster care, and how I had seen our story being very different from the reality we were living.

I remember Mother’s Day as a child and how the only thing on my mind was the special craft I’d made for my mom, or the flowers I’d picked her, and how this day of celebration felt a whole lot less complicated and emotional back then.

This Mother’s Day I remember that there are those of you all around me that are living out various versions of broken stories that have wounded your dreams and experiences of motherhood, and I see you standing there. I see how this day of celebration comes with so many convoluted emotions; deep grief and heartfelt thankfulness and hopeful expectation. I know that some of you are holding your breath waiting to turn the calendar page to Monday, and that’s ok.

I know today may be especially hard, and I just want you to know that you’re not alone. I pray that God gives you comfort, peace, and strength as you carry both extravagant love and crushing sorrow in your heart. Your pain matters, and so does your story. Allow Him to use these painful and uncertain days to strengthen your trust in Him, to surrender your need for control, and to open your hands wide to the good-hard story that He is writing through you. I promise you it’s worth it.

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When Mother’s Day Wasn’t

Hannah

Today millions of moms woke up to hand-drawn cards and beautiful flowers, breakfasts in bed and cute little “What I Like Best About my Mom” papers from school. Moms woke up to the pleasure of the kids doing the dishes, and the distinctive taps of their tiny baby’s feet as they wiggle and turn in the womb. Moms woke up excited for this day and the joys it would hold, but what if you didn’t?

What if your story does not look like the Mother’s Day version written in the Hallmark cards? What if you woke up with an aching hole in your life from your mother passing away? What if you woke to the sight of all the days crossed off on the calendar that you had not conceived, or a counter full of needles and liquids, a longing attempt at being a mama? What if you saw your child’s beating heart on a screen, but never got to hold them in your arms? What if you have to share your children with another adult, and they do not get to be with you today? What if your child is grown and this date sends you counting the days since the last time they have wanted to be around you? What if you wanted to hide under the covers because you were so weary of the arguing and fighting? What if you do not know where your child is? What if the children you sacrifice so much for forgot it was Mother’s Day? What if you cradled your child as they drew their last breath; what then of Mother’s Day?

To the ones that woke up today and had tears and sorrow and grief… I see you. I hear the loud crack of your heartbreak as you wake up hurting on a day that is supposed to elicit such joy. I hear the echo of the emptiness where you grasp for what was once in your arms, or what you hoped would be. I understand your sadness and shame when instead of an Instagram perfect breakfast in bed, you are met with harsh words and an ungrateful attitude. I see the tally of all the hours you have spent pouring your very lifeblood into the littles in your life, only to have your circumstances not look like you dreamed they would. I hear the deafening silence as you sit at a familiar grave sight.

I hear you and I see you and I want you to know that you are not invisible. I know that the hard, painful threads of your story can be woven into something more beautiful than you have thought to imagine. I know that the One who holds your shattered heart is big enough to put it back together again. I know that this day brings a burden heavy to carry, but I also know that your current situation does not have to be the end.

Choose to feel those hurts and be transformed into the gentle, compassionate human that you are capable of. Choose joy and life and hope and know that even on this hard day that challenges your motherhood, you are created for something beautiful. Believe that.

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Giving Hope

Hannah

If you are usually on our Christmas list and thought we forgot you this year, there’s a very good explanation, and no, we didn’t cross you off our friend list. We decided as a family this year that instead of giving gifts to each other we wanted to find a way to give to someone who wouldn’t otherwise get anything. We are abundantly blessed all year long, and wanted to find a way to bless someone else. We planned to adopt a family, providing their gifts and groceries for Christmas, but there was continued lack of communication and I began to worry it was not going to happen. We racked our minds for other ideas; taking stars off of a giving tree, handing out comfort packages to those experiencing homelessness… and we prayed that God would use us right where we were needed most. As I began to worry we weren’t going to find a place to serve, an email showed up in my inbox. It was a foster care agency I had been in touch with, and they had an urgent situation. They had already completed their gift drive for children in foster care; they had collected wishlists and sponsoring families had shopped for each child. Well now just a few days before Christmas an emergency placement was happening, and there would be 12 and 14 year old sisters brand new to the foster care system without Christmas gifts. She asked if we would be willing to sponsor them. I couldn’t think of a more perfect “yes!”

In a rare occurrence, we made sure everyone was off work and off school and we squished all 6 of us into the car and set off to go shopping. Mark’s parents also donated to the cause, and since we had a 12 year old and 15 year old girl of our own, we were well equipped to choose just what these sweet girls wanted and needed. We were given a short wishlist by the foster care agency, so we made sure to make a few of those wishes come true.

It brought so much joy to see my children excited about helping someone else, and instead of being sad there aren’t gifts under our tree, the absence has been a positive reminder that we got to do something wonderful for someone else. So if you didn’t get a Christmas gift from us this year, please smile in knowing you were a part of something so much bigger.

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Someday. A letter to my children.

Hannah

There has been a lot of praise this week for the Mothers. I love and cherish each and every “you’re the best mom in the world,” but I can’t help but wonder what my kids will remember of me long from now. It flatters and humbles and melts me in a puddle to hear them say they would pick me again out of all the moms, but I hope they know that I am equally aware of the holes I have left them.

Someday, my sweet babies, when I’m no longer here to look over your shoulder or come running from another room, I hope you remember that I absolutely loved being your mom. I hope you believe me when I say that you were my world. I hope you remember all the silly times and happy times and treasured memories we made, and that they bring a smile to your face every time you think on them. I hope you remember the sad and the hard times too, but I hope what you remember about those times is that we made it through. We didn’t always have the answers, and maybe we didn’t always choose the best choice, but we stuck together and we looked to Jesus, and we kept on pushing forward until things got a little easier. I hope you remember that in the sad times you still brought me much happiness.

I hope that you know how keenly aware I was of my mistakes. I hope you’ll forgive me for them; for being too protective, too selfish, too impatient, too narrow-minded, too angry… I hope you believe that I was doing the best that I could at the time. At least, that’s what I thought I was doing.

I pray that you not only forgive my mistakes, but that you learn from them and carry into your own families a deeper knowledge and a better way than I had. I hope you’ll carry some of me too; like getting up early to make a big Sunday breakfast and singing at the top of your lungs like you just don’t care.

Please forgive me for the empty spots I left and the hurts I caused. I know they are there. Forgive me for not being brave enough and humble enough and wise enough to always see them. I so desperately hope that there will be strong and meaningful people in each of your lives who can speak truth and strength to where I gave you weaknesses, and you will discover yourselves more whole.

Each one of you were the most precious, unimaginable gifts to me. I could never have dreamed of being given such blessings as you. You rocked my world and colored it and made it full of laughter and music and fun, and I could never have lived such a magnificent life without you.

Thank you for teaching me to look outside of myself; to relax, to trust, to slow down and enjoy, to take risks, to fight, to have courage and hope and ambition. I hope that the string that I gave you is enough to hold onto and run into the world; exploring and learning and conquering and becoming everything you dream you can possibly be.

I hope you will feel glad that I was your mom. I hope you can keep the good parts of me and ditch the bad, and keep making an infinite number more of the best of yourself.

You are my children; you made me a mama. Showed me how strong and how flexible and how silly and how important I could be, and it was incredible.

I love you each; from the bottom of the ocean, to the top of the sky.

Love,

Mom

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For the Mamas. And everyone who ever came from one.

Hannah

No thing in life has ever made my heart beat so proud, so fierce, so gentle, so unequivocally bursting with the highest and lowest of all emotions as being a mother does.

It has made me so many things. I have been the young teenage mother, naive and unsuspecting. The energetic working mom, balancing a career while serving growing little hearts at home.

I have been the expecting mother, dancing over a positive pregnancy test, and the would-be mother staring in disbelief at an ultrasound screen that has gone silent. I have been the adoptive mother, gathering the seeming endless trail of papers required to welcome a lonely heart Home, and I have been the foster mom who had to say goodbye with a desperate prayer for a loving mother to come.

I have been the woman struggling with infertility and avoiding going out in public for the pain of seeing maternity clothes and new babies. I have been the mother of a perfect natural delivery and of an unplanned and frightening c-section.

I’ve been the mother pleading for a miracle over a quiet hospital bed, and the mother staring down a deep gash in the earth where my child would be buried.

I’ve been the homeschooling mom, and the mom that packs lunches before the early morning school bus. The mom who cheers and waves and beams with pride, and the mom who aches over the heart of a wayward child. I have been the mama supported by a loving husband, and the single mom trying to hold it all together through long deployments.

I have been the mother who delights in adventuring and the thrill of trying new things, and the mother who grieves over being too ill to make it out of bed.

I have been enough to know that there is no “right way” to mother, and that we are all just doing the best we know how, and that the one thread that runs common among all mothers and would-be, have-been, and almost-mothers is the unbreakable thread that formed when we realized we did or could or would or had to belong to something smaller but greater than ourselves. Something that held the power to provide us with our greatest, most intense moments of joy and fulfillment, and also the lowest depths of grief and insecurity.

If you are a mother, have a mother, know a mother, want to be a mother? That’s something. That is one ridiculously terrifying and exuberantly thrilling job description that no one really lets you in on until you’re in the thick of it. And this world needs you and your desperate love and reckless hope and selfless ambition to keep the heartbeats of all of us thrumming to find our places and our purpose in this crazy life.

I leave you with this…

We all have come across people in life that tend to make us feel better about ourselves and how we are doing. It’s human, it’s our nature to compare. So imma give you a free “feel pretty super good about yourself” right now, or at least next time you’re wondering if you’re the only mom who does these things you will know you’re not alone.

I have been at this mothering thing for 15 years and 11 months. I have most definitely done one and all of the following, some of them on more than one occasion:

1. I have *actually* pulled over and made a kid get out and walk the rest of the way home.

2. I have let (begged?) my children to stay home from school because I was too exhausted to drop them off and pick them up.

3. I have mistaken one of their adorable drawings of a person or a flower for something completely unrelated and crushed their little spirits.

4. I have let my children have cereal for dinner and dessert for breakfast.

5. I have pretended to make a call and given them the “oh sorry honey, they didn’t answer,” when I couldn’t fathom adding one more friend or activity to our day.

6. I’ve been distracted when I was supposed to be watching their super-coolest thing and missed it and told them how amazing and incredible they were anyway.

7. I have gone to bed before my children and told them to remember to tuck in the little one and then turn out the lights.

8. I have forgotten it was picture day at school and been reminded by a portrait of haphazard hair and a tacky two-years-outgrown T-shirt with an obnoxious graphic on the front.

9. I have spent endless time on meal plans and grocery shopping and stocking up on all the good stuff and then been so bone-weary I have ordered delivery or let them eat whatever they felt like anyway.

10. I’ve forgotten to replace pearly baby teeth with shiny quarters and blamed it on them for putting it too far under their pillows.

11. I’ve been late getting them places because I can’t decide on what to wear, and then let everyone assume we were late because of the kids.

12. I have secretly wished that for Mother’s Day I could have a small break from being a mom.

There you have it. Wherever you are in your motherhood, or desire for motherhood, hopefully that gives you a reason or two to feel better about your tireless efforts to safely and effectively grow your little people into productive, well-adjusted adults with very little scar tissue. Just remember, there is no one-size-fits-all-mothering, so keep doing the best you can with what you know. Warrior on mamas!

My kids; here and in Heaven, biological and not, have made me so much of who I am, and I am all the better for it. They challenge me, inspire me, forgive me, empower me, love and accept me in ways I never could have imagined, and I truly am the luckiest girl in the whole wide world for getting to be their mom.