A Bundle of Myrrh

It started with the counter top. It was something I hadn’t done in 9 years of our marriage. I started to put away some of the baby bottles. I left some of the bigger ones out for Josephine. I also weeded out the sippy cups, we only need a few now. The corner that for 9 years has been designated for bottles, bottle nipples, bottle brushes, sippy spouts and lids was suddenly just one box of an assortment of plastic items.

I look around at all the other baby things I’ve started to put away. The bouncers, the new Pac N Play, the tiny socks. All the things no baby needs right now.

There was a time in my life several years ago when I was so ready to clear the counter top. So tired of sorting and putting away tiny little socks. And really over stumping my toe on the dang bouncer! I looked forward to that day. I think mostly because I didn’t think it would come so soon.

Some have looked back on 2017 with enthusiasm over their many blessings. I have done some of that but really when I look back on the past year I see a year filled with endings and frailty. It’s been a kind of wake up call or at least a reality check.

God’s will is always Good though. In the hardships of the past year He has held us up. He has shown us His faithfulness and love. We pass through fire but are not burned.

He did not give us another living child and I do not know if He will ever give us one. And this is such a strange place for me be mentally.

I once took for granted that He would keep giving us new life. That I would just have baby after baby until I was somewhere around 100. I went so far as to fear that perhaps He’d give us too much, more babies than I could handle, as if I could know that better than He does.

Now as each month passes I wonder.

I look at Josephine and I wonder if she’s our last baby. I wonder will there ever be another new baby who will need all that baby stuff I’ve been putting away? I hesitate to buy her new clothes since she’ll grow out of them so quickly and for the first time I have serious doubts whether there will be someone to pass them down to.

I suppose though my wondering is better than a particular kind of certainty. I can at least still hope. I can only imagine the sorrow that would come with the definite knowledge that I would have no more children.

I love the words of my friend Dawn:

“I see younger women, those sensible creatures, tie up their packages in tidy knots and retire themselves early from their childbearing years. I hear elder women, honestly sensible, encourage a gentle going into the good night of age-induced infertility. But I lack sense. Ridiculous, laughable, foolish, I cannot stop praying and hoping as I ever did, and dreading the day when I know for certain that I have died to childbearing forever.”

At 40 years old I know I am coming close to the day when I will know more certainly that I have died to childbearing. I find it’s hard to keep hoping. Honestly, I’m somewhere between being ok with that and the mourning of that fact. I’m stuck between a grief and a great contentment.

I’m thankful that I can say in peace and joy that I have had as many children as God wanted me to have. I am so blessed. Our home is full of life. There are many good things in the years to come as these 8 children we are raising grow under our care. I relish all the wonderful gifts that come with older children. I find so many new joys in my children as they grow older.

This is my great Contentment.

But the baby years. Those precious little years. The sweetness of a new tiny baby in your arms. The joy of watching another baby learn to crawl or walk or play in the snow for the first time. The miracle of a life being made within you and bringing that entirely new person into the world and into your family. How can I not have more of that in my life? Why must my body give out and not bring forth that newness anymore?

This is my Grief.

So it is finally, in these years our Martha and our Josephine have of being so little, I am more mindful than I have ever been of just how fast it goes. How quickly these days pass. I’m feeling the first and last time they do the little baby things more acutely than I did with my older children. Yes, I’m so tired. Yes they drive me up the wall. Yes I’m weary of diapers and sippies and the crying, oh the crying. But it is true, I will certainly miss all that beautiful wonder mushed inside all the bother.

I don’t know God’s plan for our family, whether He will grant us more new life, continue to take the lives He gives us or closes my womb for good. His ways are so much higher than mine. But in either of these circumstances I pray God would help me to say as His mother Mary said:

“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

To God be the glory.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 15th, 2018 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Crosses, Motherhood, Pregnancy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.