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Category: Motherhood
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Lullaby Confessions: Tropical Encouragement – A Review and Giveaway!
Our baby girl is about to celebrate her first birthday in only a few months. I cannot believe it! She is growing so fast, and it is amazing to watch the world unfold through her eyes. When she was a tiny infant I was introduced to the soothing music of Lullaby Confessions. And now that she is a “big” baby, she loves their music just as much! Especially their new album “Tropical Encouragement”.
I had the opportunity to review the Lullaby Confessions: Tropical Encouragement album with my baby girl. This time letting her hear a new album was a different experience because she can actually interact and respond to the music now. As soon as it started playing she started moving her shoulders back and forth swaying to the sound, and a big grin came upon her face.
What I like most about Lullaby Confessions is that it’s great for any time that you want your children to start slowing down or resting. We listen to it while I’m nursing her or when she’s eating in the high chair. Sometimes when she’s fussy I will turn in on too. I imagine myself even playing it for her when she’s older during homework time or before bed.
The new album “Tropical Encouragement” has a beachy, island sound which is very unique and fun. It also has uplifting and positive lyrics perfect for little ears, and includes several different musical instruments along with vocal.
Whether you have babies or toddlers or even preschool and young school-aged children, Lullaby Confessions is the perfect music for your children, and I am thrilled to be giving away one free download of Lullaby Confessions new album “Tropical Encouragement” this week!
Enter to win below, and be sure to share with your friends!
** I was given free music for this review. There was no monetary compensation, and all of the opinions are my own!
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Motherhood Makes Me Question My Faith
From the outside looking in it seems that I’ve proved my faith in God.
First, there was the four-year-long boyfriend who I grew up with but in the end chose a gay lifestyle. I sobbed because I felt robbed – robbed of four years in the most precious time of life. How could this happen to me – the good girl? Things like this don’t happen to good girls, right? But in the end I praised God because the experience made cling to His hem with a fierce might that I didn’t even know was in me. I fell more in love with God that day.
Then the singleness continued. And continued. And continued. My identity was wrapped up in the desire to be a wife and mother. Who was I now? A girl who may never get married? I kept trudging along making lots of mistakes along the way, but never making the mistake of leaving the One I was in love with for life. Again, I squeezed tightly to His hem. I tried to be faithful.
After that my husband lay on the seventh floor of the ICU dying of heart failure. My heart wanted to die, too. This time I learned to surrender sooner. There wasn’t much kicking and screaming – only a little – and I told God that I trusted Him. His will be done. Faith seeped from my pores in a supernatural way – so much so that others thought I was in denial. They comforted me because they knew my husband was going to die. But he didn’t. I found peace in the middle of my faith – and my surrender.
I turn on the news this week and feel in the most minuscule way the heartache of the moms who lost their babies in the tornado in Oklahoma. Then I open Facebook and learn of another mom who tragically and suddenly lost her toddler-girl. She died in her sleep. They think it was pneumonia. I don’t even know these people, but I found myself on the floor sobbing like I had lost my own.
Last November I became a mom. A mom to a baby girl. Motherhood is cliché in its nature because no matter how hard I try to be original when I write about it, I can’t. It’s just that soul-wrenching. There’s no way to know the feeling until it’s in your own chest. My heart pounds for that child. I feel like I was born again last November.
Then I lose my faith.
I watch and listen and walk myself through the shoes of the moms who lost their babies in the best way I can, but the only question I ask myself over and over is, “How do they go on?” I don’t think I could.
The moment those words whisper through my mind I shiver. They reveal a secret in my soul.
Do I really believe in Jesus?
Yes, of course, I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I know He died on the Cross for the painful sinner that I am. I know I am completely forgiven and redeemed by His blood. I know one day I will see Him and spend eternity with Him. I know all of that.
But do I believe He will take care of me even in the depths of despair I could face?
Having my heart crushed in two by a silly boy, I believed. Spending Sunday afternoons lonely and yearning for a family, I believed. Sitting in a chair in the ICU, I believed. But motherhood is different.
My security is to stand puffed up with how faithful I have been before, but motherhood shows me how far away I truly am.
My tendency is to squeeze hold of my baby girl a little tighter, protect her a little more, refuse to allow anything to happen to her. Or to beg over and over and over again, day-in and day-out, “Lord, please don’t take my baby!”. Then there is fear that I have a lesson to learn. After all, I know God cares more about my holiness than my happiness. What if taking her is the only way I can learn the lesson? The thoughts continue.
Motherhood makes me question my faith.
So my thoughts must move elsewhere – to His truth.
“Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.” 1 Chronicles 29:11-12
“It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” Deuteronomy 31:8
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-7
““For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grow old in the earth, and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put out branches like a young plant.” Job 14:7-9
“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” Isaiah 41:10
Hidden in these words is my faith. Without them I have nothing. I might as well believe that I couldn’t go on – because I couldn’t. However, with them is my life.
How has motherhood changed your faith in God?
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Now I Get It :: Thoughts on a Second Mother’s Day
I had driven five hours that day to be there with her. John and I had only been home from our 43 day hospital stay for a few days, and I was off to see another part of my heart laying there, sick, dying. This time it was my mom.
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Brave is the Woman Who Bears Her Unplanned Baby {Five Minute Friday}
It’s that time again. Time to join The Gypsy Mama – Lisa-Jo Baker – and several other writers to write for five minutes on a certain topic. Today’s topic is Brave. This post comes from the depths of my heart. I am in a season of deep grieving for aborted babies right now. Brave is the woman who makes a different choice. You are the bravest woman I know.
I do not have any inkling of what it is like to carry an unplanned baby. I will not even attempt to describe that feeling except to say there must be fear. There must be uncertainty.
But when I held my own first-born for the first time I had a glimpse of what it might feel like for someone to come by and take her out of my arms. For permanent. The thought made the tears well, my stomach knot, even fighting gloves come on.
I thought about all those women – those brave women – who make the choice to bear their unplanned babies only to have someone take them away – for good.
Brave.
Those women who selflessly lay their own ridicule, belittlement, and shame aside to deliver into this world the soul placed within them when they could have made a different choice.
Brave.
Those women who for nine months endure the glares, listen to the lectures, stand in the face of the unknown knowing that they can’t provide in nine months but there’s Someone who can.
Brave.
Then I think of Mary. Wasn’t she one of these women? Sure, the circumstances were different, but were the feelings not the same? One thing that she had further against her was an even more relentless culture. But she trusted. She trusted God.
Brave.
For any woman who decides to bear an unplanned baby only to give him to someone else to hear the coos and see the smiles and smell the sweet baby breath, you are brave.
For any woman who decides to bear an unplanned baby only to keep her not knowing how you will provide, not knowing where the food will come from, not knowing if you’ll be safe, you are brave.
You are brave for taking the more fearful path. You are brave for not accepting a quick fix. You are brave for taking responsibility. You are brave for looking head-on past this temporal world and into eternity. You are brave because you trust. You are the strongest kind-of-a-woman I know.
You are brave.
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A Day in the Life of a New Mom
This is the last day of our series, Motherhood: More than Meets the Eye. We hope each of our stories have blessed you and helped you in some way. If you want to catch up on all of the posts in this series, check them out here. Today we conclude with posts describing our “Day in the Life”, and I am sharing a day in the life of a new mom.
When we came home from the hospital my eyelids already needed toothpicks to hold them open. After about 36 hours in labor and then two nights of setting my clock for feedings every two hours, my body ached, and I couldn’t stop crying.
I never knew it would be this hard.
Four years earlier, as a newlywed, having a new husband to answer to, tend to, and think about rocked my world. At 32 years old, to say I was set in my ways is an understatement. My time was mine. My meals were mine. My activities were mine. I joked that I got more selfish by the day as a single woman.
But motherhood is something all it’s own.
A few months before Baby Girl was born I started going to a mom’s small group through my church. I like community, and already knew I was going to need one to help with being a new mom.
But when I showed up it was obvious that I didn’t fit in. I came wearing makeup and a cute sundress. With sandals.
I had heard about the perils of mothering an infant: not showering for days, big, droopy bags under your eyes, and clothes that no longer fit. But seeing it face-to-face, and knowing that was going to be my reality in a few short months, scared me.
I would be different, so I thought.
Right now it is ten o’clock at night. It has taken me all day to get this much written as today we had a “needy day”.
It started in the middle of the night last night. Baby Girl woke up around 3:00 a.m. which is normal, but then right before heading back to bed she spit up every. single. bit. of milk that she just drank. All over the upholstered chair in her room. And then of course she was hungry again. Her stomach hurt, too.
An hour and a half later we headed back to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. I laid there so thirsty but too tired to get up and get something to drink.
Then 6:30 a.m. came. It was time to eat again. I scooped Baby Girl up from her co-sleeper right beside our bed and this time took her to a chair in our bedroom. The chair in her nursery was still wet from where I had cleaned up the spit-up.
She ate, and I took her back to bed with me this time. She laid on my chest in the middle of the bed, and we slept until 10:00 a.m.
We had to get up then because it was time to eat again, and company was coming over at 11:30. I put Baby Girl in her Lamb’s Seat and set her in the bathroom so she could watch me brush my teeth. I also put my hair in a clip and slid on some yoga pants and a long sleeve t-shirt. I don’t have many clothes that fit right now. Including the sundress and sandals.
The rest of the day was filled with cluster feeding. She’s six weeks old today. And 30 minute bouts of napping. Finally, I put her in the Moby Wrap, and she slept on my chest just like this morning. That’s when I started this post.
Around 3:00 p.m. I managed to start baking some cookies for a Christmas gift I wanted to take my midwife tomorrow. Baby Girl sat in her swing and watched me.
I just finished the cookies. Again, it’s 10:00 p.m.
Baby Girl is finally down for the night, and I am once again pounding out the words to share this with you. My eyes barely open.
So even though it’s hard, am I complaining?
Not at all. That child asleep down the hall from me has brought me more joy in the short six weeks that I’ve physically seen her than I have ever experienced in my entire life.
And she’s already taught me so much too.
I understand a little more completely how much God truly loves me.
I realize that this world is not about me at all but a bigger story including the soul I’ve been entrusted.
I see what laying down your life – day in and day out – for another person really feels like.
I fall on my knees in prayer every day for help because I cannot do this on my own.
Baby Girl has drawn me closer to Jesus.
When she’s asleep a long time I miss her. When she grows a little more I cherish her. When she smiles with an open mouth I kiss her.
There are few words to describe motherhood without being cliche, so I won’t try. But the bottom line is that with the bigger hips, unbrushed teeth, spit-up, and new bathroom company, she is more than worth it.
I love her more than words can express.
Be sure to read “A Day in the Life” stories of all the bloggers in this series:
Christian Mommy Blogger
