Story by Jennifer Kish
I saw a woman sitting in a waiting room. She had a baby in her lap, one sitting at her feet and one running in circles. The baby would cry, the child at her feet would ask for a snack and the other continues to run. Mama settled the baby, dug out a pack of crackers and calmly asked the runner to settle down. She would soothe one child just to have another become upset. She constantly calmed, corrected, fed and held.
I looked at my husband and said “she’s blessed beyond comprehension (and speaking from experience)I know it doesn’t feel like a blessing.”
I know her. I’ve been her. In many ways I’m still her. The mama with more babies than hands-and we all know that even one baby can make us wish we had more hands.
Many days it’s all we can do to make it from breakfast to nap-time and then from dinner to bedtime.
It’s messes and whining and diapers and sticky fingers. It’s crying for no known reason and tantrums over broken crayons. It’s holding one while feeding another. It’s finally getting them to sleep and wondering if you did enough, if you loved them enough today.
It’s falling asleep just to be woken right back up. Someone is sick or scared or just plain unhappy. It’s finally getting in the shower and hearing the baby cry. It’s wondering if they will ever be able to do anything on their own and then crying when they do.
And it doesn’t always feel like a blessing. It feels -sometimes- like a burden.
But looking at that mama yesterday, I could see something she couldn’t. I saw a woman giving of herself to care for another. It was a beautiful picture of motherhood. And while she may have felt a burden, all I could see was her blessing.
Maybe we could step back and take a look into our own windows. The blessing is in the giving. It’s in the emptying. It’s in the weary. It’s in the laying down of ourselves to care for another. It’s in the glory of the mundane.
If you’re surrounded by sticky hands and crying babies I pray that you can find the blessing in the burden.
It’s a blessing to be the mama with more babies than hands. 💗
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