Motherhood

Motherhood makes you feel things.

Crazy.

Joyous.

Insane.

Stupefied.

Lost.

Powerful.

Peaceful.

Angry.

Tender.

You feel things so new and intense and overwhelming you're sure you must be more than a little off-balance. Those emotions hit sometimes without warning and almost always without invitation. They roll you over and you are left reeling and tearful, wondering when you will again be in charge of your tear ducts.

But there's something no one tells you when you become a mother. You make the choice to give up control. You say, "Here is my heart, now run along with it little one and please bring it back safe and whole." And sometimes they toddle back to you, arms brimming over with your heart full of happy. And other times they drop kick it back, cracked and full of pain.

I believe that this is part of the plan. Feeling, and then learning what to do with those feelings, are steps in becoming the person, the mother, the daughter, the sister, the wife, the friend, the woman that I am meant to be. And sometimes that growing hurts, much like pains in a child's stretching legs. But sometimes, the reshaping is glorious.

More than anything else, those feelings of motherhood teach me that I am not in control, that I must hand over control, not to my children, but to my Father in Heaven, who knows me and my grand potential better than I know myself. He knows these children He sent me, He knows their potential too. He knows that they and I have much to teach each other, and that ours is not an accidental meeting.

Motherhood makes you feel things.