Just Write: These First Six Weeks

These first six weeks are a hazy blur of newness. Your tiny new toes, your wee little lashes, your soft and then louder and louder new cries. You are so new I watch you sleep, because a bit of me worries you will disappear. How is it possible that six weeks ago you were still a part of me and now here you are, straight from heaven, here to stay? It seems like, no it is, a miracle. You weren't and now you are and you are mine.

Not mine for long, I know. I've learned a thing or two from your big brother. But you have your own lessons to teach me. My early days with you haven't been the lazy getting to know each other I was hoping for. They've been hurried, and worried, and full of tears (from us both). But slowly, we are getting there. Two days ago you smiled a sweet, milk drunk smile and I melted more in love with you. We are finally finding a rhythm, you and I. Sleeping, waking, nursing, smiling. Constantly adjusting, because while we revolve around each other, there is a whole other world fighting for our attention.

You look worried, scrunching up your little brow much of the day. I worry, hoping I am doing enough, responding quickly enough, nourishing you well enough.

 Through sleepy eyes we stare at each other and I hope, for now, I am giving you what you need. I know I won't always. I know the time will come, slowly, then all at once when you will step, step, then run away from me. First towards your daddy, then quickly towards the great big world.

For now though, we'll snuggle a little closer together and I'll sneak another sniff of your sweet head. I imagine it still smells a little bit like heaven.

Letter to Myself

I am bound and determined to finally, finally start writing here on a regular basis. I resolved back in January to finally start a blog and I re-resolved to actually do it during maternity leave.

But what to write? A quick Google search at two AM brought zillions of writing prompts, but mostly the advice to Just. Write. I'll try a little of both.

But I'll start with: write a letter to yourself ten years ago.

Oh sweet sixteen year old girl.


Right now you are lazing in the last of your easy summer days. Sleeping on trampolines with best friends. Exploring your ever expanding independence. Dropping off your boyfriend at college, wondering what comes next, trying to guard your heart. 

But, it's about to get real. Real hard, then real, real good.

In a few months you'll learn that even though you and that college boyfriend are making it work with just hours between you, you are moving across the country. Your senior year. To the middle of nowhere. That's the real hard.

The real good, that you can't possibly wrap your head around yet? That across the country will push you and that boyfriend to make big commitments, commitments that are worth following through on. That senior year is going to bring a new friend who you will laugh with more in one afternoon than you have in years.That the middle of nowhere is going to have just the right people to grow you, change you into the grown up you're meant to be. 

You can't imagine that as you journal, and read, and then grapple with God that ten years later you will still be doing that. You will still doubt, you will still question, you will still wonder. Despite that you will let Jesus lead you into loving in hard ways and at the hardest moments, the moments you are called to, that make everything up til then seem easy. You will find a confidence in Christ.

All those questions lead you to a good place, a place where you can keep asking questions, and keep loving Jesus.

You are so angry with your parents. Be careful what you say, because very, very soon they will be your friends. Then your best friends. You can't believe this now, but someday you will live in a tiny little steel mill town just to be able to ride to Walmart with your mom now and again.

Right now you want to be a nurse because it's interesting, because it will pay for college, because maybe you will be able to travel. You are going to love it. It won't actually pay for college, and you won't travel how you hope. But someday you will hold a dying woman's phone to her ear so her sister can say goodbye in the moment she passes. Someday you will squeeze blood into a dying new mother, until she isn't dying anymore. Someday you will sit and listen to an old man's stories instead of sitting in the nurses station, and it will change you both. You cannot imagine now, how much nursing will take out of you, or how much it will give back.

And right now, as you wonder what to do about that college boyfriend...take a deep breath. Take it one day at a time. Keep making choices you are proud of. Because loving him across the country is about to become loving him over a bunch of years. The life with him you imagine now is full of adventures. The life you will live with him...less full of adventures, more full of bills and spit up. But it's better. You can't imagine the daddy he'll be to your babies, and how in loving them and him together you love them all that much more.

It's going to get so good. Hold on and love yourself through it.

Just Write: Is he a good baby?

I forget that a baby turns checkout line strangers into "friends", until the sweet grandpa in line behind me loads my groceries onto the conveyor so I can soothe mine. As I juggle the bags, the carseat, the fussing (always fussing) newborn and remind the almost preschooler (so close to preschooler...it's impossible. It's only been five minutes since he was the milk drunk love on my lap) to put-that-down-running-please-walk one more time, my elderly helper, asks "Boy or Girl?" "Boy", I answer. Then, for first of many times over these too fast first weeks, from the cashier "He's beautiful. Is he a good baby?"

There are no bad babies, as my mom would say. Except, he cries hours a night. And when he isn't crying, he's fussing. And when he isn't fussing he grunts with a furrowed little brow, just catching his breath to cry again. So, maybe someone is doing something wrong. Realistically, I know it isn't him. But at two am for the fifth day in a row, its harder to remember which of the two of us needs to keep calm.

And really, in these so early days, there are only two of us in the equation. Yes, there is his daddy, and his ever present sometimes loving big brother, but right now, his little world revolves around me, and mine him. And he's miserable, which makes me miserable, and only one of us can do anything about it. But I'm fresh out of ideas.

So I say to the cashier, "Of course he's good" because, he must be. He's straight from heaven, hasn't had the chance to be any different. And I say to myself "Keep it together, let's just get to the car" . And I say to the not-quite preschooler "Keep your hand on the cart". Then I load the groceries, pray the baby will just.stop.crying for a few minutes and try not to cry myself.