I wrote this one night right before I started working full time. Now that I've been at it a month, I figure I'm gonna put it on my blog. I think it will be important for me to be able to look back and see my feelings. So, here ya go, Lydia's Memory. One more time:
Oh sweet Baby, how I miss you already -
You stay on my mind all day and weigh on my heart every second.
Your sparkling eyes and captivating grin have no idea that they won’t be met with mine for the rest of the day, and then all day tomorrow, and then all day the next...
And my teary eyes and forced smile are heavy with my burden of guilt as I hug you goodbye this morning.
You are growing every hour, changing every second.
You are a perfect design, so malleable to any and all forces of good and evil anywhere your are.
Your perfect and divine design cries out for it to be your mother who nurtures you to the forces of good and protects you from the evil, who trains you in the Lord, who loves you with touch and treasures memories of your blessed innocence through the day...
But our world is not perfect and neither is your mother -
Your perfect design is being forced to adapt, and because it is divine, it will do so beautifully, and because it is divine, it will do so only at the cost of your mother’s tears -
Because mothers, too, are divine designs, connected so intimately to their young, that her baby’s pain is ever so much more intense than personal pain... that mothers go hungry long before their young hungers.... that mothers are exhausted in order for their babies to be rested...
And though mothers are a divine design, she is human.
And the humanity brings the flaw of guilt ... the tears of missing her baby.
Thank you, Lord, for the blessing of family to help raise babies. Thank you family (Rachel) for being so dear to us and being likely the only reason I stay sane through this.
Griffin. I miss you sweet baby. I won’t be like this forever.
Sigh. I soooo feel your pain on this. :( I didn't realize you had gone back full-time. I hope it's going well, Lydia.
ReplyDeleteOh, Lydia...I think that GUILT itself is a lament of a mother, working full time, part time, at home, away from home, caring for them ourselves, not caring for them ourselves. It doesn't seem to matter how or what we do or don't do, we feel guilty about it. So stop it. As best you can, anyway. ;) Try to remember all the gifts that you ARE giving him that he wouldn't get if you weren't working. There are probably more than you realize... Love you! Love that boy! Love that we get to be such a big part of his life!
ReplyDeleteNot very comforting, I know, but...moms don't quit tearing up and feeling guilt when their adult babies are in turmoil or feel sad. It's kind of a forever thing.
ReplyDeleteBack when I was about 7 1/2 months pregnant with you, I went with your dad to Corpus on a business trip in the summer. I made the comment that we thought we'd take a "last fling" before the baby was born (back in those days, we didn't know gender). A very wise friend commented, "Honey, you've already had your last fling. 'Cause once you have kids, you'll always think about, worry about them, feel guilty about this or that."
And, ya know, she was right. I was always wishing the kids were there to see this or that, wondered what they were doing, etc.
But I'm thinking last flings aren't all they're cracked up to be. Even though I still have to fight off guilt feelings of my own--yes, even now--my life is so rich, so full of love and absolute beauty I can scarecly even handle that.
I'm pretty sure children are part of God's design to help us rise out of our "all-about-me" state of mind. We just have to not let the guilt disable us.
Rach's comment about guilt is very true. ...but then there's the danger of feeling guilty for feeling guilty... and I should quit now... except to say To God be the Glory! No way we can do it on our own.
And no, my original comment that the computer ate, read nothing like this one...