The Mother That Almost Wasn't

I am the mother that almost wasn’t.

I know, you find that hard to believe looking at my twelve passenger van and the herd of kids I wrangle but, yes, I am that.

The mother that almost wasn’t,

 except for …  grace.

Yes, there almost wasn't piles of smelly dishes, and mountains of laundry,  shoes up the wazoo, and Legos gone wild,

but there also almost wasn't tiny blonde tots with eyes like the ocean, and chubby hands that grab your face to pull you in close for a bubbling kiss.  Because if I wasn't a mother, I wouldn't have messes, my bamboo would gleam, but my arms would be ache-empty and I used to think I wanted it that way. Before I knew grace and God.

 I was the kid who, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, would have said, photo journalist, poet maybe.  Kids?  They weren’t on the radar.  It’s hard to imagine how kids fit when you’re planning on traveling the world, telling stories with pictures and words. That was at age 11.  My friend Courtney wanted to have kids.  Six of them.  And she wanted to be a doctor.  Today, she is a doctor.  And I have the six kids.

Then there was the fact that my teenage years were a full on disaster.  Kids?  I wasn’t even a good  babysitter.  I was anything but kid-friendly. And I was anything but a Christian.  I wrote my senior speech and debate project on pro-life versus pro-choice.  I was the latter. But within a year, I would be a Christ-follower and God would begin that work of gently, painstakingly, molding my sin-scarred heart for His purposes and opening it to the idea of children.  But God delights in taking the most broken and binding up our wounds to birth beauty. 

 And then there were the physical reasons that I almost wasn’t a mother.

By seventeen I had abdominal pain so much of the time I wasn’t sure I was going to live.  I was certain I had acquired some disease that was sucking my life away moment by moment and the pain that would drop me to my knees and make me pass out was more than I knew what to do with. 

I finally went to the doctor.

Tests.  More tests.  The only thing they could figure out was this thing they called endometriosis.  They said it could cause infertility.  I was seventeen.  I wasn’t thinking about infertility.  I just wanted the pain to stop.  They put me on the birth control pill and it did stop the pain at the expense of a bunch of side effects but they gave me no other options.

Fast forward four years.  I am a newly- wed at twenty-one with this lingering thought at the back of my mind, the looming word, infertility and what ifs and what if I can’t be that thing called a mother?  What then?  We talked about adoption.  We talked about the what ifs but we were twenty-one and really we weren’t thinking much past lunch time, for goodness sake, and we weren’t ready for kids yet, right?

But that doctor walked into the office where I was interning during my senior year of college, it happened to be a pro-life pregnancy center (I’m telling you God has a sense of humor) and he called me out right then and there.  This doctor, a NICU specialist, he didn’t know me from Adam, and he heard that I as newly married.  He asked me if I was planning on having children soon.

I explained about the endometriosis.  He looked at me compassionately and said, 

“Listen, the worst thing you can do is to be on that pill.  If you ever want to get pregnant, stop taking it now.  Trust God.  He knows what you can handle, and the longer you wait, the greater your chances are of never getting pregnant even by waiting until your late twenties. God is the author of Life.  Trust God.”

He said all of that with the gentle, patient calm of a father of eight and grandfather to many more because that’s what he was.  It was like God sent him.  And I knew that he was right. 

So, I went home to tell my husband what he said.  Yeah, that wasn’t exactly a glory moment, more like a bombshell .   But bombshells can detonate grace too.  He said he would pray about it.  And, we did.  And God had his way.  So, there we were, twenty-one years old and surrendering our childbearing to God, kids or no kids.  But we were taking this step of faith together, and leaving the results to Him.  After a lot of prayer, in a little under a year, and we had a positive test.  And nine months after that, we had our Caleb. 

But then, there was no turning back.  How can you go back to trying to stop life when you know how close you’ve been to never having it at all?  So we left it in God’s hands.  If there would be more children, it would be because He chose, not because we decided we were finally ready. 

Because are you really ever ready for your whole world to be rocked, tilted, spun?  That’s what kids do, they rock your world.  We were rocked and shocked to find that nine months after Caleb was born, we were expecting again.  But we trusted God.  And then when Caleb was just three I gave birth to our third child. So far, we have had six in eleven years.  Six crazy kids, two of whom are wrestling each other on top of me as I write this, and two parents who live by the grace of God. 

This journey of surrender and faith has taught us a lot: 

We were way more selfish than we ever realized.
 
 We are never more dependent on God than when we let go of all of our plans and surrender to His, and never more fulfilled. 

Motherhood may not have been my original plan but God knows far better what is best for me and what I really need. 

I needed the sanding block of motherhood to wear away at my pride, self-reliance, and selfishness to make me more like Christ, to make me useful in His kingdom.

Abandoning your way and trusting God is the only way to really find your life.

 Jesus said,” If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross and follow me.  If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it.  But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it.” Mark 8:34-35 NLT. 

Motherhood is meant to be a selfless giving away of your life, of living open- handed, open- wombed, open- hearted, of giving life to others, of living a life that is given away.

 But this given-away-life is meant to be the life of every Christ follower, male or female, mother or not.  Motherhood is just a tool chosen for some of us to turn us into the selfless, the givers, the servants, the Jesus people.  Whether you give birth from your body or you give life through your words, your prayers, your actions, your everyday- giving- away- laying-it-down life.  We are most like Christ when we are giving, serving, laying down self for the sake of Jesus and to make the Good News of His great grace, known.  Maybe it's folding 24 loads of laundry a week or washing dishes until your hand bleed or kissing baby boo-boos, if it's done for Christ, it is a life well spent.  And there is nothing else I'd rather be than all His.

And as for this almost wasn’t, I can say that what has made me mother, life-giver, Christ- follower, is this  ….just God’s grace.