Tonight I went to get take-out for dinner for our family. All the way home I cried. Not just a trinkling of tears but tears that cloud your eyes and make your shirt – or in my case belly – all wet. It could have been the song “I Will Never Leave You” on the CD I was listening to that a friend just gave me at my Baby Sprinkling.
It could have been that two weeks until my due date I can’t walk up stairs without having to stop, my toddler can no longer sit on my lap, or a deep fatigue has set in like I could sleep for days. Or it could have been that I was anticipating what’s to come. The pain. It’s going to hurt. Bad. And that’s scary.
Or from there it could have been that I started thinking about how these are my very last days that I have with just my toddler girl – just me and her – who I love so much. I’ll have to share her soon. And she’ll have to share me.
It was probably all of these things but there’s one thing it was for sure – hormones. I’m about to have a baby, and my body is reminding me of that.
Everybody told me how different life would be having a first baby. But I think the warnings have been even more pronounced with having a second baby. I hear that having two is no joke.
So I’ve tried to prepare which means I haven’t been writing. Before the past several months all of my free time went to writing. Either here or on my other blog or with some freelance writing I do. I mean early morning, during naps, and after bedtime – I wrote. Now my house wasn’t as organized or clean as it is right now, but my heart was full because I love to write.
However, I had to make a choice. Writing or getting ready for baby. I thought I wouldn’t have the time I needed to get our house ready for baby after baby comes, so I used the summer to do just that. I cleaned out, I organized, and I made many trips to local donation places. Not to mention I have memories to last a lifetime of a summer spent just me and my toddler girl.
The house is ready. My heart is full of mommy love. But I still miss writing.
A wise friend told me recently to give God what is feasible in the season I’m in and then ask Him to multiple it as He sees fit over time.
This has been my resting place.
But it hasn’t been easy to rest here.
Before I was married with children I thought being a wife and mom would be all I wanted out of life. That never again would I be restless, needy, or discontent. Don’t get me wrong, having these gifts is and has been the joy of my life. But my heart still yearns for different, too. Not more, necessarily, just different.
Desires I didn’t know were there ten or fifteen years ago, but as God has evolved me, He’s evolved His purposes for me, too. So laying some of these desires down for a season isn’t easy.
I look around to my “online world” (and yes, I know that sounds weird to those who aren’t writers or bloggers, but there is a social, online world where we all live together, too), and the other women – wives, moms, daughters, friends, students, teachers, speakers, writers, authors – seem to do it all. They don’t skip a beat when a new baby comes. Or so it seems.
My inclination is to criticize them, downplay what they’re doing, convince myself that they can’t be doing it all, so something (or someone) is suffering. But this isn’t fair.
Instead I’m learning that God gives to us what we need when we need it and that looks different for each person. Maybe He has given them the blessing of increased energy or time or family help. Maybe He’s orchestrated it so that they can continue on in all their endeavors without slowing down.
But for me He wants me to slow down, and just offer back to Him the best of what I have.
It reminds me of the widow in the Bible who gave a few cents to the temple while people around her gave abundantly more. Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on” (Mark 12:43-44).
Right now I’m putting in everything I have, but I’m not putting everything I have into writing. This is simply not the season. In just a few weeks I’ll be knee deep in sleeplessness, nursing ten times a day, and loving a toddler girl who is no doubt going to need her mama more than ever as she meets her new sister. What’s left over for writing and ministry will be my poverty. I’ll offer it as it becomes available, but it’s not going to be an abundance. And yet Jesus will bless it even so, just like He did with the widow.
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