If I could travel back in time, there's a thing I desperately wish I could tell my twenty-two year old self: newly entered into motherhood, overwhelmed with the immense stretch of required selflessness and sacrifice that unexpectedly opened up before me with the birth of my daughter. I was vastly unprepared for the unraveling of the Self I thought I had known for so long, or for this awkward, almost violent remaking of myself into Mother. It felt as though I'd fallen, unawares, into one of those whirlpools that draw swimmers into deep underground caves and then, if the swimmer has the smarts to simply surrender to the current, spits them out again onto the sunny shores of sparkling blue waters, in delightful hidden coves.
I wish I could go back and have a long talk with that slightly bemused, but adapting-nicely young mother on the beach of that secluded cove. I wish I could impress upon her that those whirlpool currents repeat themselves again and again throughout life. I wish I could have prepared her for the repeated un-makings that lay ahead of her in the journey of being made more like Him.
I wish I could impress upon her the necessity not to get too comfortable here, convince her that the period of time spent in that space of continuous mothering was, mathematically speaking, such a tiny fraction of her life-- the time of being large and in charge, while feeling so inadequate and drained was really just a moment of her life. I would try to warn her that this drastic stripping away of illusory shreds of self-determination and independence was only the beginning...
Would that have changed things? I don't know. If I had realized then that life is really a series of these whirlpool roller coasters from one level of self-loss to another, from one unmaking and rebirth to the next, would I have been better prepared?
He who seeks to save his life shall lose it. He who loses his life, gains the world.
I doubt it would make a difference then. I know it now, and I still fight the current every time. I still arrive on the new beach fighting to swim back to the one I've left, the one I'd grown accustomed to. I lie there, utterly undone, exhausted, wrecked; for far too long, considering how often now I've experienced this remaking process as God's grace to me. Why can I still not trust that the change is, as he promised, from Glory to Glory?
I'm never ready for change-- no matter how sought after, how intensely pursued. I always find myself doubting in the moment of achievement, struggling against the pull. My labors were a physical manifestation of this. Days and then weeks past my due date, I'm still vastly pregnant. Irritated with the delay, exhilarated by every twinge that might signify the start of labor, and yet so doubtful, so afraid. Finally reaching that terrifying middle where one MUST go forward, through, because the backwards way of escape is no longer an option. There's nothing else to do but push the baby out. Die to the past, be reborn. Forgetting what is behind, striving forward to what lies ahead.
I can only hope that eventually I will learn to surrender to those terrifying currents and anticipate the next stage of growth with something a little more gracious and dignified than my current frantic thrashings and protestations. Hopefully, as I age, I will learn to trust the loving currents, and wait confidently, expectantly for the landing on the next shore.
