As I sit on my couch watching my sweet son sleep in his swing and have my puppy snuggled next to me, I'm amazed. I'm amazed at where God has brought me and all he has brought me through. Right now I feel like he is currently bringing me through many things. I'm experiencing the challenges of caring for a newborn, being sick, somehow having tweaked my back, the challenges of breast feeding, and limited sleep. He's letting me trust Him in the unknown of the season we are in. I think it could be easy to get sucked in to focusing on the challenge. If my life has taught me anything through it's challenges is that there is always joy on the other side of suffering. Moreover my catholic faith has taught me to embrace the suffering as a gift. So today I'll embrace the gift, because the gift is so sweet.
You see this time last year I was praying for a morning like today. I was praying for baby smiles and sleepless nights. I was asking for the gift of motherhood. I knew it would be hard, in what ways exactly only experiencing it could tell me, but I wanted to steward young souls for Jesus. It wasn't until I was pregnant that I began to see that while my heart was to steward young souls, God was working on stewarding mine through this task. You see marriage is the vocation God has called me to, and babies are a wonderful fruit of that vocation. It's not just what I'm called to do: to wife and mother. It's what I am called to be.
But being takes growth and molding. I'm not by nature the woman I need to be to be the wife and mother my husband and child need. So God patiently is working on me by breaking my selfishness. He's giving me a chance to fully depend on him and to prepare me not only for work He has planned but also to prepare me for the work I'll one day do in heaven.
I'm learning there is purpose in the 3 am dance party my son wants to have. It's to remind me as I'm bending and noticing how sore I am, and how its 3 am and how tired I am, and realizing we need to put tissue boxes every 2 feet in the house, that while all that is valid and true, what is most true is the smile on my son's face when he stomps his foot on the piano of his play mat and it starts up with a tune. There is hope in that smile, and a reminder of grace. As a parent I am learning to put my sons needs first, and I'm constantly thinking about what I can do that is best for him. On a small scale it's helped me see God, who while I don't always see it is doing the same for me. And while I wouldn't have said a 3 am dance party was what I needed- it was. I needed that sweet time with my son. I needed to watch him hold his head up better than he ever has. I needed to snuggle that sweet boy as he fell asleep. If I get sucked into the details of the moment I miss the joy that it brings. I see this a lot in my son.
Fulton doesn't see that when I'm taking off his sleeper and changing his diaper that it is best for him, he sees it as cold. He doesn't see a few steps ahead how nice it will feel to have a fresh diaper, a clean sleeper and his little legs massaged. He doesn't yet get excited about going in the car seat, because he forgets how much he enjoys the car ride until we are there, or that being in the car seat leads to a car ride. He's looking at the moment he's in, that he's out of his mamas arms and strapped into a car seat. And I'm learning from him to just look at a moment but also to remember that moment is just a beautiful part of the big picture.
Maybe that's what we grow in as we are older. We learn to zoom out in our vision. We take in more and more information to make a more complete picture as we grow but yet our picture is so lacking compared to the zoomed out picture God has. When life is hectic I find it hard to look at the bigger picture but get sucked into the details. While this can be helpful at times there is also so much value in taking a step back and remembering the tough minutes are just minutes but oh the many hours we are blessed with each day.
It's this that I'm learning to practice that is helping me with the feeling of a messy house, with no meal plan, and with no schedule. These things are stretching as I value order and organization. If you told me it would be February and I still don't have a planner for 2017 I wouldn't have believed you a year ago. (Yes I value a paper planner. I like to write.) And yet, here I am, into February and my planning consists of a stack of little papers on my desk that I probably don't look at often enough. I haven't made a to do list all year, when I was a daily to-do list maker. It's not that I don't get things done it's just knowing I only have time for the top priorities and those aren't hard to forget as most of them involve Fulton. It's the breaking down of my will and desires to rest in the truth that God is working on me, and molding me. It's taking the time to just watch my son in his swing, memorize each detail of him and soak in the bigger picture, that these days are going faster than I ever imagined. I don't just want to survive them I want to soak them up. So I am learning to be in the moments, but not of them. To appreciate the bigger value of the minutes I get with this boy.
So I'll continue to sit here with the the heating pad and the puppy snuggled up watching him sleep, and going through more tissues that I care to admit. Even though a part of me wants to get up and do all the things I see that need to be done just in this room. I'll enjoy the rest this allows for this time next year who knows if I'll get a Monday like this, watching my sleeping newborn, snuggled with my puppy, safely in our home. This even though tough, is truly the best day for me and I don't want a miss this.
You can follow on twitter https://twitter.com/Anitamorinpa
You can follow on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/beautygoodtrue
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment