A few nights ago my parents had a Bible study at their house and one of their group members asked me,
"How is your visit to Boston going? Are you just here to relax, or did you come for some sort of business?"
It was 8:00 at night. Both of my kids were bathed and in jammies and still awake, full of whatever business they seem to get full of when it's dark and they are late to bed. I was in my parents' small home which was filled with adults I'd never met before, and I'd been travelling alone with a 2 year old and a 9 month old since 3:30 in the morning on Saturday.
So I wasn't sure how to answer him. 'Cause while I'm definitely not getting paid to do any business during my visit, I'm sure as hell not relaxing in any definition of the word. In fact, these last few weeks have hit me hard. Hit me like an airliner trundling down the runway, like a wind whipping through trees, like a bottle blunt over the head. Sam was on-call the week before we left which meant we didn't see him for days at a time, and then I packed up a big suitcase full of my jeans and sweaters mingled with their smaller jeans and tiny sweaters, and left for a ten day trip with Clara and Sammy to see my family in Boston. I've been planning this trip since my birthday in April when I asked for airline tickets to see my parents, my brother Robert, my sister-in-law Malia, and my baby niece Elsie. It's good to be here. I am supposed to be here.
But hey, man. I'm tired.
I'm tired from worrying about our plane rides.
I'm tired from the actual plane rides.
I'm tired from parenting alone the last few weeks.
And tonight;
oh, gosh,
tonight?
I'm tired. Of. My. Kids.
Not of them, themselves, though they can be a little awful,
but of their never-ending need for me and my space and my time.
My friend lost her baby this week, 20 weeks into her pregnancy. Her little boy, she'll never meet him. She'll never hear his heartbeat again or get to shush and sway him to sleep, never get to cut his hair, never have to put him in time-out. It's a heartbreak I'm familiar with, the searing, burning pain of losing a beloved baby. It's a loss a mother does not forget. I've lost a baby and I've kissed the quiet face of another mother's lost baby and I've prayed in anger over lost babies and there's something that breaks in that empty mother that doesn't get fixed. It does not repair. Like a crack in the earth that now contains a formidable rushing river, it is a break so violent that it can absolutely never be repaired.
It can grow a river.
It can produce beauty.
But it cannot be fixed.
Tonight, after another long day with my two year old, the one who never ever ever stops talking and the one who never ever ever stops pushing boundaries, I called my husband behind closed doors and whispered that I wanted to run away from his daughter. I don't know what to do anymore, Sam, I said. She's pushed me to the edge. I'm here. On the edge. I'm out of ideas. And I'm tired. I was calling him from thousands of miles away and two time zones ahead and I just really needed to hear his voice, to hear from someone else who knows the difficult loveliness of our Clara and her complicated, intelligent, manipulative brand of disobedience. I needed another soldier to remind me why we're fighting this good fight at all.
My fellow warrior gave me some advice (he was irate, he is as stubborn as she is and doesn't put up with nearly as much as I do) and then said with resolve,
Don't let her break you, Jess! You know she'll try to break you!
It was funny, and we laughed, mostly because it's true, but let's be honest.
Motherhood breaks us.
There is no place on a man's body that breaks open and produces life.
But a woman?
No matter what way a baby is born, through a cesarean cut or a birth canal,
a woman is broken open for her child.
These little people, these beating hearts, they break us open. They devastate our bodies and our lives in the most resplendent fashion, carving paths and valleys so deep that they hurt, changing our very landscape with every breath that they do or do not take. The pain of raising my children is carving away at me, with every argument and every defiance and every stumble away from my instruction, the pain of their pain is widening a crevice inside me. This relentless love for my children, the terrifying and determined love of a mother, it chisels in me walls steep with miles and miles of edges and cliffs. I cannot help but love them with a wonder awash in fear, cannot help but want the best for them with a need akin to desperation.
And so the valleys extend.
But then?
Then come the currents.
The river waters begin to swell, begin to swirl, begin tumbling over those dry and sparse grounds we thought we knew so well.
It's all changing, it's all hard, and it's all so achingly beautiful.
It is the very essence of God, of a holy refreshing love, breaking and changing and making space for what will come.
In the suffering, may there be promise.
In the silence, may there be hope.
In the pain, may there be the scent of fresh water. May the rain be fruitful and may the land find healing.
I am in Boston on a dark and cold autumn night and I'm so glad my babies are asleep. Somewhere back home in the chill of an Idaho October, I imagine my friend would do anything to give her baby more time.
Motherhood breaks us open. It cracks us through and through. Tonight I'm praying for refreshment, and for new days. For rivers to come. For cliffs to be beautiful and not just dangerous. For Clara to listen and for more patience and wisdom, and most of all for a mom who is getting ready to tell her son goodbye.
May joy come in the morning.
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