That feeling rises up from the gut. A fullness that tightens bones and organs and reaches my throat like a noose. Things are piling up and toppling over and my hands are far too small to catch it all.
I am not big enough for this. I’m not mature enough. I’m not wise enough. I’m not disciplined enough and I don’t have enough.
And just when my heart starts pounding he cries from the other room and I have to take a break from my worry to tend to his.
Those delicious little arms wrap tight around his Momma’s neck while he forgets his nightmare and softens, whimpers, nuzzles in. I can feel his squishy lipped breath and smell his fine, thick hair and I soften, too.
He doesn’t need me to have it all figured out, he needs me to be there when he cries. And I don’t need to know how everything will work out, I need… to be there when he cries.
And holding him? I’m enough. I’m just enough for this. I’m just exactly God’s provision to these three precious people’s need for a mother and that is grace upon grace upon grace. Every moment God is making me enough for them, filling me up with a Love that couldn’t come from me so that they can taste for themselves something whole and good.
Because I hit the end of myself pretty often. I get to that point past the threshold of caring and then something really more happens and I will find something where there was nothing.
My motherhood is this dance of giving more than I have to give and getting more than I could ever use. This filling up and emptying that sways and dips to a rhythm I cannot catch. And these children of mine are brave and lovely and take what I offer with grace – they don’t complain that I’m scared, that I’m foolish, that I’m uncertain. They nuzzle in and let me be needed. They give me the gift of somehere to sacrifice and I am being remade here as I join in the Holy work of God’s making them.
So all those things pile up and tonight I don’t fret over the toppling. I’ll do this: I’ll do the showing up and God has proven time and time again that he’ll do the catching.