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.

The Importance of Listening in a Politically Divisive Climate

The other day, I saw a post from a sweet momma of little girls. Their smiling faces paused my scrolling. She said the words on many people’s hearts: I hope and pray that – should the horrible moment come – my girls will be believed.

I pray so, too. There have been many years (an understatement) where men’s words were implicitly believed and women’s counted void. Too, over those years, many a woman has been abused in the quiet of night and scorned by the light of day.

I know, also, that men have been wrongfully accused by women (over those same years and in our culture today).

As I’m typing this, I’m keenly aware of my Little Noah, my boy, still growing big within the protection of his loving momma. I’m aware of my desires and hopes for him, the newfound prayers I mumble in the morning to the only One who hears. I’m aware that I would desperately want someone to listen to him if he were ever falsely accused of anything.

Friends, I want to talk about our political climate for a moment. Politics is a topic I’ve religiously avoided on social media because of its divisive nature. We’ve all seen a well-meant comment spark the hottest anger. It happens most easily online, but we also see it happening on street corners and outside government buildings. Hurtful words morphing into bloody fists - a country torn in two. And that’s a problem.

If a coin does in fact have two sides, then justice is never as simple as one human’s word against another. Understanding takes listening. Listening intently with the end goal of understanding – not staking a case against the other. Listening rebukes violence by its very nature; it seeks to ease tension and to embody respect. It says, “you first.”

A key benefit of listening is that an apt (appropriate) reply can be made. We stand on the basis of mutual understanding and can move forward from there. When we speak without listening, we act out of pride, endorsing chaos, creating enmity. We have this on good authority: “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame” (Proverbs 18:13).

Listening does not mean accumulating sound bites until we “think” we have the gist of what’s happening. It means searching out the truth with diligence until we understand the story in context. Without context, and without hearing both sides, we’re left without any real sense of justice: because “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17). This is justice – to weight both sides impartially and to reach a conclusion from the outcome.

So. Here’s where we take a breath. Here’s where we realize that harsh words do, indeed, stir up anger and that no one benefits from that. Here’s where we lay the rocks down and pick up peace instead.

And if we’ve truly listened and sought to understand, here’s the truth we can cling to at the end of the day: we Jesus-followers, who trust in the Living God, can know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He will bring justice. Sometimes we see it here on earth, and sometimes we don’t. But we take comfort that He sees, knows, and protects those hurt or wrongfully accused.

And with that I’ll say amen.

Ebenezer Stones and Penny Prayers

Deep down--underneath the layers of all our other needs--what the heart aches to have, and prays to receive, is a closeness to God. And when the ache and the prayer are formed into words, His whispered answer is a sweet cadence to the beat of our hearts. We know, in those moments of clarity, that He understands. We know we hear His voice. We know we are loved beyond comprehension. These moments become pivotal points of remembrance. They focus our fragile faith on unwavering truth.

A few years ago, the idea of "penny prayers" caught my ear, and I knew I wanted to join in. A friend told me that every time she saw a penny on the ground, she'd pick it up, store it away in a jar, and say a prayer for her future husband. Then, one day, she would give the filled jar to her husband on their wedding day. I loved it, and instantly began looking for pennies.

So I walked everywhere with head bent down, eyes roving the ground for coins. And as often happens when beginning a conscious search, I found nothing.

Nada.

No penny, no nickel, no dime, no quarter. Though I did find the occasional round of chewed gun, browned over with dirt, masquerading as a penny before my hopeful-then-disappointed eyes.

After some weeks, I began to question the meaning of such a fruitless venture. Did this mean God had no man in store for me? No person to pray for, to store the coins away for in faithful diligence?

My overthinking mind overly thought the situation a hundred times.

I told a friend this, and she gave me a saucy grin, saying I should be looking for the quality coins: the nickels, the dimes, the quarters. Her words stuck with me, however jokingly they were meant. I wanted a quarter, not a penny. The treasure-coin coveted for filling the meter and operating coin laundry; for the soda pop machines and the guilty-pleasure bubble gum stand.

One pallid winter morning, I walked to a coffee shop. My hoping heart poured to God as I, again, found no coins along the course of my route. And in the pouring, He gave me peace. He seemed to touch my heart that morning. And I found myself telling God--in words that only come from heart-to-hearts with Him-- it's okay if there's no one. You are enough. 

The desire that had found a home in my heart was still settled within me--I knew it as I prayed. But the giving away of the future, the laying it before the All-Knowing, was freeing. I grabbed my coffee at the shop and walked upstairs to find seating. A two-seater by the wall was free. I pulled out a chair.

And right there, right under the table, was a bright quarter full of silver shine.

I picked it up and just held it, turning the coveted coin over in my fingers. Feeling the smooth sides, the grooved edges. It's a funny feeling to hold an answer from God in your hand. The heart feels full and rich and wonders why it ever doubted that He heard the ache and the prayer? That shining quarter became my Ebenezer stone:

"[S]amuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer [stone of help]; for he said, 'Till now the LORD has helped us.'"

I brought that quarter-stone home and saved it away in my jewelry box (where it still sits today for me to lift the lid and see). And when times feel shaky and I forget His goodness, that little quarter speaks volumes about the way God knows me so intimately. Because it wasn't that God was promising me a husband that so fed my tearful soul (though He would, indeed, go on to provide my prayed-for husband). It was that fact that He heard and knew what I needed.

So, our soul-filling Abba, let us hold tight in remembrance to those Ebenezer stones, the odes to Your goodness. And may this new year be full of Your grace.