Raw feelings

Sometimes it's difficult to say what a mother's heart feels. This is especially true because each mother feels so differently from one another and at different times in our lives. We may celebrate the first steps of our first born, while we will mourn when it's our baby. I may feel encouraged to see my little one showing his first steps of independence while you are desperate to keep yours close.

A mother can also feel, I believe, with greater passion. When our children cry, it yanks at us with unbridled fury. When they laugh, our spirit soars! We feel love, joy, anger, sadness, and fear in a way we never knew we could.

Then there is the mother who will never know or bear her own. And the mother who suffers the loss of her own. There are feelings within those women which I cannot pretend to understand.

What never ceases to amaze me is the way many feelings take me by surprise. The way my feelings flip from one extreme to the other also often takes me off guard.

Why this melancholy line of thinking? My heart has been heavy this past week or so with many of the feelings we tend to feel so strongly: fear, hope, guilt, shame and the like. I found myself with reason to believe I could be pregnant... with a 4 month old and a 19 month old. Morning waves of nausea, familiar only from previous pregnancies, started my head spinning at the thought. Fear of what my husband would think, what people would say, and the thought of being sick for the next 6-9 months triggered fear within my heart.

Saturday I finally summed up enough courage to mention it to My Beloved. Knowing he was perfectly content not to have any more children, my worst fear was that he would be disappointed. He lovingly put that fear to rest, assuring me that if we were having another child, that was fine with him.

My next concerns were for Sweet Pea. Would I be able to continue nursing with all on my plate and a growing baby? My heart mourned the possibility of having to stop.

My fear of man kicked in as I began to worry over the comments people would make.

Then the guilt and shame... I so desire to have more children, but I didn't feel ready. I found myself hoping that I wasn't, then feeling guilty at my lack of faith. In faith I want to trust the Lord for the number and spacing of our children, yet in the midst of a trial, my faith wavered.

To keep a long story from becoming longer, I found myself relieved and disappointed, thankful, ashamed and embarrassed this morning as I learned there was nothing to worry about in the first place. I praised the Lord for knowing what is best for our family and sought His forgiveness for my lack of faith.

I find myself, though relieved, somewhat disappointed at the same time. Though I was unprepared to have another baby right away (let's be serious, not enough time has passed for me to forget all that God allows us to forget), I do want another if it is God's plan. And my weakness in faith fears that it may not be.

Thank you for allowing me to share my heart with all of you. Now my fear of man fears the comments that will come.

Labels: As it happens..., Reflections

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 1:18 PM