FOR THE QUARANTINED MOM THIS MOTHER'S DAY

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I’ve never been particularly good at stereotypical “mom” activities.  I have no baby books for my boys. I don’t experience insurmountable joy playing trains on the floor or eating imaginary food.  I’ve never considered motherhood as the primary feature of my person-hood, or the prominent marker of my identity.  Sharing feelings like these sometimes causes the mothers in my mom’s groups to “gasp” at how cold hearted I sometimes come across, but I know many other mothers who have appreciated the vulnerability of what felt like unspeakable feelings deep inside of them.

Mother’s Day is always a little bitter-sweet for me. 

Having faced infertility, I know the anguish of those attempting to conceive- sitting in the pain of another failed pregnancy test or another month that will cycle around with unmet hopes and expectations. 

I experienced the pain and heartbreak of multiple failed pregnancies; I’ve packed away gifts I was given for a baby that never came. I’ve had to tell friends and grandparents that it’s over, still wrestling in my own heart with what that really means. 

I know what it is to finally hold a much anticipated baby but be overcome with sadness and guilt as my own mind can’t find happiness and peace. My mind wrestling with post-partum depression and the agonizing and debilitating grief and shame that accompanies it.

I know what it is to find incredible joy in my own babies warmth, while sitting beside friends that mourn the loss of their own infant in an unexpected death in the middle of the night. My heart was torn as I cuddled my own baby, crying out with the person I love who could no longer hold their own.

I know what it is to feel tired, exhausted, and pushed to the very limits of myself, to find out I am pregnant with another baby I hadn’t planned for. The culmination of happiness and sadness in that moment are still a guilt I carry with me.

These motherhood moments are just a flash in time, but these memories are burned into the deepest parts of my identity as “mom” and always resurface on Mother’s Day. 

This quarantined Mother’s Day will be added to the list above. 

It is a Mother’s Day marked with joy and sorrow. I have been pushed to the limits of my patience with my kids and have had to ask their forgiveness many times for my shortness and raised voice. It is a Mother’s Day marked with happiness and wonderful memories as I get to spend mornings curled up with them - their breath still stink with sleep and toenails still dirty from playing in the mud the day before. It’s a Mother’s Day without the handmade gifts I’ve come to treasure from years before, but instead with gifts of their time, and energy, and funny sense of humor I see developing before my eyes every moment of the day.

This time in quarantine has pulled me many directions. 

The burden of motherhood during a global pandemic is not what I thought being a mom would look and feel like.  Raising my children without the village I had grown to depend on is hard work. At the end of the day, I ask Jesus, “Did you delight in the work I did today? Did you delight in the dirty dishes I cleaned? In the toys I picked up for the 87th time? When I read a book to them at the end of the day when I could barely keep my eyes open? Did you delight in me when I muttered under my breath that I don’t want to be around my kids right now? When I chose to spend an hour watching Netflix while my kids ran around outside? Did you delight in me when I said this isn’t the parenthood I signed up for?”

But moms, this mother’s day, you are more than a Mom. You are a daughter of God. He delighted in you in the same way you delighted in your little one with stinky breath and muddy toes. He knew you weren’t perfect, but he loved you anyway. 

He delighted in you in the same way you delighted in your child’s smile. When you watched your child and found joy in the simplicity of his play. 

He delighted in you in the same way you delight in your child, Mothers.  He delighted in you in His perfection, not in your own.

- Emily Thien

Katie Erickson