On New Momma Fears and Truth-Telling and The Things She Most Wants to Hear

My brain makes a crackling, cellophane sound, like a tv that can’t quite make the connection, every time I go to think. Third trimester is pulling out the baby brain, throwing up walls where I used to make connections. Twice now, driving has been an adventure –mid-route my mind breaking and stalling so that I didn’t know how in the world to get to the place I was going. The well-working home-bound routines are also permeated by a hazy fog that hasn’t lifted in a while, veiling my deep feelings and thoughts, like how I might feel about all this upcoming change, the end of so many normalcies.

Don’t hug me too tight or the waves of emotion might come spurting out, all these mid-process thoughts that won’t be ordered into understanding. For instance, my mind is divided between longing to hold my baby for the first time, see his red tinged skin and draw him into me, and being overwhelmed at the thought of not being able to jump in the car and go, say I just need a day to myself and head to the coffee shop with the friend. The cold, common selfishness that shirks at being needed constantly wildly juxtaposes the warm peace that fills me at knowing he’ll need his momma to draw him from the bassinet and press the nurturing life-food into his ready mouth – me, and not the random woman on the street.

He rolls around like a whale in my stomach and I need to hold him, see him, pat him gently on the bottom while I rock him to sleep in the same chair my momma rocked me, in the same room I grew up in, brought home from the same hospital where my parents met me. If you don’t know, my husband and I temporarily live in my childhood home while we penny and pray our school debt away. It’s a gracious gift that sometimes sits uncomfortable in Cody’s and my stomachs as we long for a home of our own, where we’d nurse our baby in his own nursery, the room he’d grow up in, in a neighborhood full of friends ringing our doorbell begging to play. Sometimes I don’t feel a full mother without this. Which is silly. But it’s there - rooting out my fears and fighting my misplaced hopes out of the dirt.

He’s told me to trust Him a thousand times over. But sometimes the “yes” takes a while to make it all the way into my hopes and dreams, my relentless desire to have the material things and know all the parenting statistics. “Yes” I trust You with all my heart but my mind is still straggling behind.

There are so many fears that a new mother faces. Some are written on our faces, some hidden in our hearts. If I felt confident to tell you that I fear not getting enough skin-to-skin with my baby, of people crowding too close and losing intimacy with him (that crucial time to bond early), then I might hold back telling you I fear someone hurting my son, or worse, of hurting him myself – not knowing every detail of his developmental stages and all the best ways to stimulate his body and mind (because this is where the real insecurity hides). If I tell you that I’m tired and can’t imagine the tiredness coming, then I’d stop short of saying that I’m afraid of losing all my friends – being just outside the beltway of all the places they might drive and being too exhausted to drive myself. Fearing my interests won’t converge with theirs’ and that every time I’ll want to talk about my son I’ll feel guilty, knowing our lives don’t look the same and that I could be burdening or boring them. The lies we tell ourselves are the most convincing feelings.

Maybe it’s all this and more that makes the kindest advice from the kindest momma feel like another rock in my pack, weighing me down even as I think I want to hear you! I want to know what you know.

The new momma, the one with the first babe still warm in her womb, the one with the crackling, cellophane mind – here’s what she might want you to know and to say.

Know her mind is wracked with thoughts and emotions as she works hard to prepare for this new normal. Know she values your input, has a million questions, covets sound counsel – and that some days she’ll have the mental space to listen long to your wisdom (mulling it over well and considering the benefits), and some days she’ll be the one that needs to talk it out, these confounding feelings bearing down on her.

When you meet with her, try not to heap suggestions on a young mother’s head. Don’t take your strongest held parenting dogma and tell her she has to do this because it’s the only way that works. Do look her in the eyes and tell her she’ll do great. You won’t notice the eighth inch her shoulders raise, the way you’ve removed a fraction of the burden she feels. But she will. Don’t tell her all your hard-won, childrearing wisdom in one whirlwind sit. Do ask her what she wants to know, and what she’s looking forward to, checking in with her often with an ear quick to listen. If you’re able, turn back the pages of your mind to when you were in her steps, and empathize and joy with her. Remember the fear and the excitement and the lurch in your stomach every time you realized that this humongous tummy sitting on your legs was a very real human waiting to call you mom. Hold her hand – she’ll need you. She doesn’t know how to read this new map. Be her friend – that might be more than she’s capable of asking.

Letting Go of Shyness & Embracing Quietness Instead

A little while ago, I wrote a blog about what it has looked like to grow up as “the quiet girl.” I left the piece somewhat inconclusive. Here’s some light and truth for us quiet folk.

For most of my life, I have used “shyness” and “quietness” interchangeably. The words seemed married, in my mind—bark of the same tree, blossoming the same fruit. Yet I undoubtedly use them differently. When I feel favorably disposed to think myself reticent, I call it quietness. When I feel ashamed, I name it shyness.

I was at a friend’s party recently, and my shyness commanded my actions like clockwork. Friends huddled in groups to talk; I awkwardly hovered alone. Even now I feel uncomfortable thinking about it: the way shyness dictates my actions and feeling, and the growing, incessant desire to root my identity in something else.

When the high school “shy girl” identity threatens to color my adult self, I start to feel panicky. I start to scheme ways I can be more outgoing, or present myself in a more adventurous, daring light. It’s amazing the things we think will set us free.

As the root of shyness has worked itself out in my life, I have come to see the difference between it and quietness. Shyness roots itself in fear. Deep down, through various layers of soil—of insecurities, of doubts, of lies—it finds bedrock by cracking into our identity. Though shyness might seem a harmless, weak word, the root works at the rock over time and gently taps through. And we find that we believe (deep, deep down) that we are—at the soul of us—shy. We believe there’s no hope for it. That, standing in a room full of people, various groups laughing and sectioned off with their backs turned away from us, we must stand alone. We cannot break in—why? Because we are shy.

It may be the most debilitating word I know.

Quietness, I am realizing, is so different. And so sweetly freeing. And, what is more, it is confidant.

True and unwavering confidence comes from faith in God. This faith works itself out in our lives in myriad ways, and not least on the list is confidence. Finding (and believing) approval from God creates a dynamic shift in our perspectives. When we constantly work for others’ approval, we have to constantly be looking inward, at ourselves. We’re judging every word and movement we make under the law of people’s approval. When this is traded for confidence in God’s approval, we have capacity to look to others’ needs.

This roots a quiet person in peace. It speaks the healing truth that words do not fix all problems, not all moments need speeches and—most importantly—if I have nothing to say, the void does not need to be anxiously filled with something, anything, but can be waited out with patience.

It reminds me, in the midst of a party, that there are other people in this room. There are people who need a listening ear. There are people who have joys and struggles to share. And if, past all that, I still end up standing alone, that’s okay, too. I have peace in His presence.

We know God highly values a “gentle and quiet spirit,” (1 Peter 3:4). We’re told to temper the number of our words in His presence (Ecclesiastes 5:2). We’re reminded to “be quick to listen, slow to speak,” (James 1:19). So we know that quietness can be a wonderful gift. Not a burden, not an identity, but a sweet and unassuming gift to those around us.

If, like me, you find yourself much more rooted in shyness than quietness, I pray you won’t feel defeated. That kind of thing only leads to fear and more of what we most don’t want. Instead, seek God. Look up, when shyness most prods at your identity, and know that He is there. He is what we need. He is who approves us.

That Word of Encouragement (When the Father Prunes the Useless Parts)

No one knows me better than my mom.

I can see us now—sitting like we always do—her in the cream-colored chair, the one blued over with birds and branches; me on the couch, tucked in between decorative pillows, bare feet on the ottoman edge. Both of us cupping steaming mugs of coffee (either our first or second brew of the day). We just sit and talk, sharing understanding. And I pour out my heart journal-style, feeling full freedom.

I feel safe there.

And, inevitably, when she detects the pride, the control, the sin of the heart festering like gangrene, she pulls the stops and speaks with gentle eyes, loving lips. And because she knows me deep, heart-level, these wounds of love sliver open and heal quick—like paper cuts. There’s pain, but it’s pain with gratefulness, which eases the ache.

The Perfecter of my faith does this, too.

And He’s been pruning me.

He caught me in the kitchen, multitasking at washing dishes and holding a grudge, pounding soapy anger on pots and plates. Scrubber in the hand, I rubbed the grit hard and washed it off hot. The darkness outside and the microwave clock both told me I had a right to be mad. And, to ice that cake, I was planning for a party that would end up being cancelled.

This and all the depth of my heart the Lord has seen. And so He’s been snipping off these useless bits.

He is our perfect Father, our sinless parent. And His punishment—His pruning—is one of the biggest blessings we get. It’s a testament to His love. Even though there’s a sliver (and sometimes more than that) of pain when parts of us are cut away.

One father says of Another:

“My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline and do not resent His rebuke, because the LORD disciplines those He loves, as a father the son he delights in.”

Hebrews calls this a “word of encouragement.” The soul encouragement sparked by the very thought that we are God’s family. And—what we can’t lose sight of, especially in these pruning times—that the end is “a harvest of righteousness and peace.”

It’s like the tree in my backyard that had to be chopped: fungus ran through the top of it and would have destroyed the rest. So midway up the tree it was sliced slant-wise. For a while it stood there, a gaunt stick of a tree pointing up toward heaven. But it grew back—different and curved and beautiful. And without disease.

So there’s joy tucked up in this pain. Joy in the Father’s presence. Joy in the cutting away. Joy in the letting go.

And we praise God for that.