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| Drawn by: Ryan Hollen (my awesome husband) |
Last year around this time, I somehow knew that I would celebrating the last Mother’s Day of my life not being a mother. Around this time last year, I became pregnant, but didn’t know that amazing news until June 7th on the fateful day I took three pregnancies tests early in the morning, freaked out, and went to tell my still asleep, groggy husband that we were going to have a baby! So much has changed in a year.
I think many women go through their pregnancies, trimester by trimester, rubbing their tummies and dreaming of what motherhood will be like. I want the “Gilmore Girls,” mother-daughter relationship. I want to share dialogue with her that goes a mile a minute and eat in diners and drink too much coffee and...my list could go on and on, as unrealistic as that hope may be. I want my little girl to grow up strong and independent. I want my little girl to follow her dreams and to love Jesus with all her heart. All good things.
No one truly prepares you for the day you become a parent, the day you become a mother. Those months when Marin was kept safe in my ever growing frame, I dreamt of how all of this would look. I planned. I prepared, like I always do. Motherhood is the most rewarding, challenging, life-giving thing I have ever done. I have been stretched to my absolute limits and found that I can keep moving forward. I have felt my heart swell for a tiny human that I’ve only known for a little under 3 months. I have found that I need to step back and soak in this time that I have with her because I know that I will blink and she will be driving, dating boys, and Ryan will be sitting on the porch every evening, waiting with a list of all of the reasons as to why a certain gentleman cannot date his daughter. I look forward to those times, but that’s not where we are now and I feel the need to slow all of it down.
So, to all of you mothers out there, thank you and keep going. It does take a village to raise a child and we are all part of that village. Embrace the bed head on the mornings when you haven’t been able to shower and it’s nearing 12pm; when you haven’t been able to get a single bite to eat for yourself all morning. Embrace dirty diapers, the first time they roll over, when they begin to crawl, and their first steps. Embrace the battle scars upon your body that show the long journey it took for you to hold your baby in your arms. Embrace the quite moments in the morning when you rock you baby in your arms and feed them before the sun even comes up and the world goes about its business. Embrace the days when you have to go to work and then think about your child constantly, through every project and meeting of the day.
You are a mom and that is an amazing thing.
Happy Mother’s Day.
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