Nothing could have truly prepared me for life as a mother. I had heard stories about what to expect, read books on parenting, and listened to podcasts from mothers and married couples, but only after giving birth and trying to lay a baby down to sleep for the first time did I realize that I had no idea what I was doing.
I had an unexpected C-section, a fussier-than-usual baby, and was running on fumes after days on end of sleeplessness. My mind turned quickly to the future. I couldn’t imagine having another baby and felt defeated in the face of the Church’s invitation to be open to life. I wondered how I could ever go through all of this again, potentially multiple times, for the rest of my childbearing years.
But one year postpartum, life had changed drastically, and I found myself excited to welcome the chance of being a mom once again. Now, four years and two more children later, I am so glad that I didn’t let fear stop me from giving more yeses to God with my fertility.
The lies about motherhood
I realized that a lying voice in my head, which had been planting messages counter to life for many years, had grown deep roots that were hard to reject when it came to motherhood. And it was this voice that was speaking to me in my new motherhood. This voice was deceitfully subtle, not saying anything that was necessarily false but insinuating that God’s plan for children in my life would leave me destitute, alone, and incapable.
I will stop here to say that I am a part of a loving and faithful marriage in which it was safe and proper to bring forth children. Many circumstances make it appropriate to use Natural Family Planning to avoid a pregnancy — but that was not the case in my marriage.
Social media, the invitation by the world to project whatever image I desired to project, had enslaved my brain to make sure I controlled what I could so that my life looked whatever way I wanted it to. The messages of self-creation and “you can be whatever you want to be” made me think that my life was supposed to be about what I, and not God, wanted me to do and be. Beautiful photos of curated living rooms and kitchens on Pinterest made me believe my marriage was all about creating the perfect aesthetic in my home and family. The idea of self-care, diets, and lifestyle ideals made me think that before I thought about others, I needed to make sure I was taken care of. The need to escape suffering and inconvenience combined with the necessity of immediate gratification that is written into the fabric of modernity makes one wonder why you would ever choose to do anything hard if it didn’t have some quick reward.
I can’t express how much these messages tried to steal joy and purpose from my marriage and motherhood. Ultimately, these messages told me that my life was about me — my desires, my hopes, my feelings, my fears — and not about the mission and calling God had for me. My life was about escaping suffering, doing only what was most convenient and quick to give me whatever high I searched for. They made me think that I must have control over my life, hopes, and desires before I could think about taking care of others. And they made me think that becoming a gift of self, instead of fulfilling my deep ache with quick fixes, would instead take more of me than what I had to give.
The truth I discovered
I haven’t learned how to reject these lies perfectly. But six years of marriage and three kids have made me realize that God’s plans are much better, much more filled with grace, and much more fulfilling than the plans I tried to create for myself, the plans the lies told me I wanted. I’ve given beyond what I thought I was capable of. I’ve seen how three kids can play with and entertain each other, leaving me space to do things that rejuvenate me, which I didn’t foresee when I spent hours trying to keep my first baby from screaming for what seemed like all day. I’ve seen my marriage be filled with generosity and grace instead of hurt and selfishness because I stopped thinking about what I needed and instead focused on what my husband and children needed and were longing for in the depths of their hearts.
And most amazingly, in all of this, I have not lost myself. I have only become better, more capable, and more of who God made me to be. I haven’t felt this every moment of every day, but I have seen the golden thread woven throughout the events of the last six years that has brought me to a place of peace and trust I didn’t know was possible.
It most assuredly won’t be all sunshine and roses in the years to come, which hopefully will include more lessons, forgiveness, growth, and babies, of course. But if there is anything I’m convinced of now, it’s that the lies I believed in my early motherhood, the lies that had taken root for many years, were meant to turn me away from the very thing that gives me the happiness I so desperately long for — God, his good plan, and becoming a gift of self.
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