The year of 2012 was my very first Mothers Day as a mom. The day fell right smack in the middle of a huge transition for us. We were moving back to our home state of Texas from New York, and we had a new family member...a three month old baby boy. #swoon On the Wednesday before Mother’s Day, I flew home with that baby, leaving my husband and our 3 year old lab in our fully furnished townhome in NY.
(Shout out to my mom who flew with me, because I was a terrified wreck, and my brother who drove our second car home with my husband.)
The movers came the next day and packed up every single one of our belongings and threw them on a truck promising they’d meet us in Texas. (I was CERTAIN that this would NEVER work out, which is why my husband booked my flight to leave before the movers ever showed up). He left with our dog on the following day. I remember forcing him to make room in his Toyota FourRunner for the baby swing because if the moving truck lost all of our belongings, I did NOT want to lose that. Y'all he made it fit, and our poor dog probably didn’t have an extra inch of room on that twenty-something hour drive.
New dads: do NOT question a new mama's irrational ideas for the first few months...ok? Just agree to take the swing.
A few months earlier, from New York, we’d signed a 6 month lease on an apartment in Austin, sight unseen. But it seemed nice-ish, and close on the map to my husband’s new job. The lease didn’t start for another week, so our family of three + our dog settled into my parent’s house to wait. And that’s where we were on my first Mother’s Day as a mom.
When I think about the circumstances of our life at that very moment, that first Mother’s Day was the absolute definition of living life with absolutely no control over my circumstances. A state of living that I wasn’t used to (or preferred to) experiencing.
We had no home, no belongings (albeit temporarily) and no idea of what our future would look like. We had direction, but no details. And we had a baby swing. What if the apartment was in a bad part of town? We had no idea. What if our belongings never arrived? We had no idea. What if the job didn't work out? We'd have to wait and see. What if...What if...What if…
And looking back on that weekend, I can’t say for certain, but I remember taking all of it in really calmly. Which is absolutely not my style when it comes to being out of the driver's seat of life.
Because I didn’t know it was coming beforehand, but becoming a mother was the first time I was forced to learn to let go of control. Or the perception that I was in control. I’d spent my whole life learning and perfecting the art of holding onto all of the control. To being in charge of all the moving pieces of my life. My education. My career. My relationships. My goals. It was all me calling all the shots all the time. I’d spent my life with my own hands on the steering wheel, tightly holding on with white-knuckles to make sure everything went according to my own preferences.
And getting married was a gentle introduction to the idea of no longer possessing all of the control, but having a baby...that threw me overboard and forced me to tread water while trusting that a life preserver was coming for me.
My first Mother’s Day is such a representation of this change in my life. An old way of doing things was over. This new life would be one of relinquishing control. A date forever marked by joy accompanied by uncertainty.
Because that’s what motherhood is all about, right? It’s a pendulum swing between intense joy and unbearable fear.
So if yesterday was your very first Mothers Day, I imagine there’s all kinds of emotions and thoughts running through your head. I look back on that first year and I still believe it to be the hardest. The most lonely. The most isolated. The most uncertainty. The most humbling. It was the year that I realized that my life would no longer be wrapped up nicely in a box that I’d created and curated and controlled for myself. It was the year that I began releasing the tight grip of my fingers on my life, insisting that I always have my own way.
And that phase of life has long past. You know the one. The hard one. The first year of motherhood where you’re questioning everything and you’re lonely. Your social outings include the pediatrician’s office and maybe Target if you can fit it in between during nursing sessions. That phase of religiously abiding by your one kid’s nap schedule and trying to remember to restock the diaper bag before leaving the house, with nobody to talk to all day long, wondering if you should go back to work, and how do I make friends now, and will he ever NOT cry when I just stepped into the shower?
Every single one of your relationships - whether your marriage, your extended family, your friends, your coworkers- EVERY relationship has been redefined by the fact that before you were one person and now you’re different. And our culture doesn’t like to acknowledge that. Our culture would have us believe that motherhood doesn’t radically change us. But we all know that’s a lie. We all know our hearts have been resected in a new, permanent way and our priorities have shifted.
That phase doesn't last forever, and honestly, I wouldn't really want to go back to it. Being a mom of three is FUN! (also hard, but that's for a different day) There is ALWAYS someone to talk to, always something to do, and nobody cries during my showers anymore. Lonely is one thing I definitely am not.
But the phase of uncertainty...and the requirement to be open-handed with my obsession of being in control, that’s still happening now. I’m still treading water and waiting for the life preserver. And I’m a better swimmer now, but I’m still placing my hope outside of myself and waiting. And I’m much less surprised now to know that I’m not the one whose actually in the drivers seat. I’m the one faithfully treading water...not the one driving the boat. Or the one throwing out life preservers.
So what I wish I could say to myself back on Mothers Day 2012 is to expect this from now on. Expect to place my hope outside of myself and to get comfortable with things not going as I’d always planned. Learn to let go of the idea that life will look and be perfect all the time. And stop striving against hardship. And I'd gently help myself recognize that I’d spent my entire life worshipping the idea of a life of ease and comfort. And ease and comfort are not the reason we were created.
No, I don’t want to look back on my life and say, I lived a comfortable life, white-knuckles and all. I want to look back and say that I radically trusted God, that I lived open-handedly and generously, that I sacrificed and grew and became a greater version of myself through the adversity I faced. That trials didn’t break me or cause me to lose hope. I want to look back and see a life so completely out of control that others were inspired to tread water next to me.