Enjoying Motherhood
My baby is growing up. She will be leaving 8th grade soon and I will have a highschooler! I miss her as a little baby. Her squeaky voice. Her funny personality. It’s still there but comes with so many other dynamics. She doesn’t let me share too much about her. She says it gives “dear diary.” Gen-Z is so mysterious. Motherhood hasn’t always been easy for me. I carried a lot of weight from it. I think for a long time I couldn’t enjoy motherhood. It wasn’t until recently I was at my daughter’s soccer game being hard on her when my dad checked me. He said, enjoy this time, enjoy this parenthood thing. Enjoy her Leigalo! She’s right here, she’s looking at you and she wants your approval. Just enjoy every moment and love her. Enjoy motherhood.
A hard punch to my ego.
I have a type A personality. I’m the eldest daughter of a samoan family. I have 2 younger siblings. And then I take on the role of a single mother. My sisters say, I am the up tight, perfect daughter, bougie, fancy, overdressed, nose in the air, and cares what my family thinks. I’m not offended. It is all true. I am impatient, a little hostile and I have trouble relaxing. I think that carried into my motherhood early on. I am 13 years deep into this motherhood thing and I keep blaming myself for future trauma in her that does not exist. Daddy issues, not having a “real family”, not having everything she should so I overcompensate, etc, etc, etc. And the only issue she was going to really have is one with me. I am the issue.
The truth is whatever you don’t deal with, your children will have to deal with. Whatever demons you do not confront your children will confront. Whatever small sin you minimize will grow larger in your children. The enemy is after our legacy. The baby I birthed is growing up and will tell her own story one day and God forbid I lacked the wisdom to see I was the problem all along.
I do not want her to be like me. A lack of wisdom and an abundant well of pain. Is that what I think of myself? Even after all the work God is undoing, I keep coming back to this altar of self-damnation. This thought that the cost of my doing is to suffer and suffer well through motherhood. I was still not enough to be her mother, so I must teach her how not to become like me. It is ironic to think like this simply because God does not view me that way. From the moment He knew of my daughter in my womb, He loved me more. He chased me down. He knew I could not do this without Him. He wanted to reveal Himself to me, even more clearly than I knew Him as a child. There is not another God like Him— who could look at you with all your mistakes and blemish and still say: you’re mine; you and your daughter belong to me. I got you.
After I went home, God revealed Himself yet again through my dad’s words from the soccer game. He was right. Enjoy her Leigalo. God has already forgiven you. I keep making this motherhood thing about me. God is so gracious to keep reminding me that this thing has never been about me. Ever. It has always been about how much I need Him. How much He desires a relationship with me. How much I can not do this in my own strength. And if I chose another day for selfishness to take center, the legacy He is trying to build will fall. We think we our gods to birth life. We are but specs. Motherhood had become an idol in my life, when it was merely just the tool to get me back to the Father. I admit I am hard on her as such is life. I’ve been so focused on what I don’t want her to be like, that I was missing out on who she is becoming right now. Right now, I had to choose to watch, mold, and tend the plow in front of me if I was to care for one of God’s own. A Lot of humble pie since I moved to the island. I had the lens all wrong—scrutinizing her to be less like me and more eager for accolades that are good but will not stand firm when the world passes. I must prioritize that she is a woman like me, in such a way that we are women after God’s own heart.
It is wild to finally try to enjoy motherhood as my daughter makes her way to high school but God got me. Right? God, you got meeee!?
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6
I am writing you love letters from Hilo.
I pray you read this with hope and love. With joy and expectation— knowing Jesus loves you but more importantly He needs you to grow up— in your word reading, praying, believing, hoping, looking for His return.
All my love,
G.
