Motherhood: A trial of fire

There's a concept I've never spoken out loud.

It felt too vulnerable and scary.

I don't even know that the voice constantly running in my head had put it into words. 

Because words make it real and to be honest- I didn't want it to be real. 

Because shame, and expectation, and upward progression... you know?

Then my sister in law threw it out in a family conversation one day. 

We were laughing about our kids throwing fits during quarantine and how we're all losing our minds and our tempers a little and all of a sudden she said, "I think I was a better person before I became a mom." 

It was my actual worst fear spoken out loud- and it hit me square in the chest. I had been scared to death, because for a while now, I've been feeling like I've become a worse person through motherhood instead of a better one. Because isn't that what people say? Motherhood made me more of myself, and filled with love, and stretched me, and made me so much better and less selfish....?

I had been listening from my bed (being pregnant and nauseous will do that to a girl) but I stood up and walked over to let her know that she had just spoken my truth. 

Immediately every mother on that call laughed hysterically (in a very 'we feel you girl' type way) and my mother-in-law chimed in that she had said the same thing to my father-in-law when she was a young mother. 

But how could this be?! Eternal progression! Why don't the trenches of motherhood and family life seem to be such a stretch for the "more of myself" moms?

But what if that progression.. the eternal kind... isn't a straight upward trajectory? What if you're on a path that leads to elevation 100, and you're at 95... but the Lord wants you to reach 1000, so He puts you on a path that starts back at 85, but you have potential on that path to get to 700? Divorce, death, job loss, failure, and radical change all can seem like a set back in the moment but often they put us on this beautiful (albeit often painful) growth trajectory. What if ease and comfort and routine and warm sunshine aren't the point? What if that trajectory is the point?

Anything that's worth doing is hard, so they say (whoever "they" is") but would it be hard, or challenging at all if it was just straight upward? If there weren't paths with some elevation loss, cloud cover, or shrubs blocking the view?

I think if we're working hard and constantly feeling the fruit of our labor it's more of a carrot before the horse situation that requires no faith. And although there have certainly been stretches of motherhood that have felt love-soaked and sacred (I always think of Rory at 18 months), I've had to practice a lot of faith. I haven't always been able to see the carrot. There hasn't always been love and bathtubs of giggles and hugs and sloppy kisses and I love yous before I lay them in their beds each night and it hasn't been all puzzles and sunshine and tickle fights each day either.

I think motherhood is the epitome of trial by fire. And I'm practicing faith for that gleaming diamond I'm turning into (I pray) at the end. I'm certainly still a lump of coal in the midst for now, but I get glimpses every once in a while. Of the diamond, the house being built, the majesty of the mountain through the shrubs. And it reminds me what path I'm on, and helps me continue to forge forward. On days there are carrots and on days when there aren't.