Welcome to Pearl Girls™ Mother of Pearl Mother’s Day blog series – a week long
celebration of moms and mothering. Each day will feature a new post by some of
today’s best writer’s (Tricia Goyer, Sheila Walsh, Suzanne Woods Fisher, Bonnie St.
John, and more). I hope you’ll join us each day for another unique perspective on
Mother’s Day.
AND … do enter the contest for a chance to win a beautiful hand crafted
pearl necklace. To enter, just {CLICK
THIS LINK} and fill out the short form. Contest runs 5/6-5/13 and the
winner will on 5/14. Contest is only open to US and Canadian residents.
If you are unfamiliar with Pearl Girls™, please visit www.pearlgirls.info and see what we’re all about. In
short, we exist to support the work of charities that help women and children in
the US and around the globe. Consider purchasing a copy of Pearl Girls: Encountering
Grit, Experiencing Grace or one of the Pearl Girls™ products (all GREAT
Mother’s Day gifts!) to help support Pearl Girls.
And to all you MOMS out there, Happy Mother’s Day!
What I
Didn’t Know by Rhonda Shrock
I always knew I wanted to be a mother. As a girl, I played house with my
dollies, shushing them when they cried and kissing their plastic heads.
Looking back at that girl, I realize now that there was a lot she didn’t know.
This morning over my fresh-ground coffee, this mother of 22-1/2 years
scratched out a list of 10 things she didn’t know then that she knows now.
1. I didn’t know – how could I? - just how completely a tiny, helpless
scrap of humanity can capture the heart and hold it forever. From that
first whooshing heartbeat and the first butterfly brushes, a mother’s heart is never
again her own. For all eternity, it enlarges, walking and pulsing and moving
outside of her body; in my case, in the shape of a blue-eyed boy with rooster tails.
Times four.
2. I didn’t know that the size of a mother’s heart is always changing,
stretching to embrace each new baby that comes, then growing again to love their
friends and then their own families.
3. I never knew, as I changed my dolly’s dress, how many reasons there
are to worry when you’re a mama. Didn’t know about the nighttime
vigils. Didn’t know the anxiety of separation, the terror that floods when
you turn around in the grocery store and they’re gone. Didn’t know about
the fear of the pond next door or the concern that pays for swimming lessons.
Didn’t know the thousand-and-one reasons that keep a mother awake,
whispering prayers on her pillow in the dark.
4. No one told me that loving so much means that you will hurt hard
and keen; that what pains your child hurts you even worse. I
didn’t know then that a playground taunt travels through that smaller heart and
lands square in yours, stinging and burning like fire. I didn’t know that
motherhood makes lionesses of us all and that there’d be days I’d have to bite my
tongue and pray to not sin.
5. I didn’t know how exhausting it is, being a mother. I didn’t
know that it takes everything you’ve got and then some. Didn’t know the
bone-deep exhaustion; how it strips you bare and shows how selfish you can be, but,
too, that you have more strength than you know.
6. I didn’t know, playing house, how much joy mothers feel; joy so
big that it makes up for the pain. Just looking at those eyes and the curve of
the cheek can make you so happy it hurts. Watching them grow and find their
talent and win at something…all the money in the world can never buy that kind of
happiness.
7. I didn’t know how making babies and raising them, how it binds you
to their father. I didn’t know the intimacy you feel when your eyes meet
above those tousled heads, and your smiles say, “Just look at what we’ve done.”
8. That girl in the homemade dress, she didn’t know that letting go is
one of the hardest things a grown-up mama will ever do. Rocking those
babies in that small rocking chair, she didn’t really know that babies grow up and
walk away and there goes your heart, out into the big, wide world. No one
told her that part.
9. I had no idea how rewarding it is, being a mother. How the
happiness that comes from boy kisses and awkward hugs can’t be bought or sold.
How proud you feel when you see what they’re growing up to be and that all
the planting and pruning and watering and feeding is finally making fruit!
10. I didn’t know how much my babies would enrich my spiritual life or
how they would change the way I pray. I didn’t realize they would lead
me to a deeper dependence on the Heavenly Father or how I much I would need His
wisdom to raise them aright.
These are things I didn’t know before I was a mother. But I know them now.
Oh, how I know them now! And I’d do it all again.
22, 18, 13, and 5. By day, she is a telecommuting medical transcriptionist. In the
early morning hours, she flees to a local coffee shop where she pens “Grounds for
Insanity,” a weekly column that appears in The Goshen News. She is an occasional
guest columnist in The Hutch News. She’s also blogged professionally for
her son’s school of choice, Bethel College, in addition to humor and parenting blogs,
and maintains her personal blog, “The Natives are Getting Restless.” She is a writer and editor
for the magazine, “Cooking & Such: Adventures in Plain Living.”
She survives and thrives on prayer, mochas, and books.
Exciting News – the latest Pearl Girls book, Mother of Pearl: Luminous Legacies
and Iridescent Faith will be released this month! Please visit the Pearl Girls Facebook
Page(and LIKE us!) for more information! Thanks so much for your support!
