celebrate in the mess

Isn't it beautiful how you can read someone's words...a stranger, someone you have never met, and yet word after word you feel connected to them. drawn and connected to their experiences because their experiences are yours. as I read her words, it happened. Tears filled my eyes. My soul knew hers. This is for you sweet mommas.

Dear Mother,
This morning seems like all the others. My little house creaks in the season change, warm under covers and cool outside. I pour my coffee, step over dinosaurs, toss a bruised apple. It is time for the quiet, the morning time before my four boys wake. I close my eyes, a nod at prayer.
"I'm not even sure you hear me. Are you there?"
He walks in sucking his thumb, and he was supposed to quit that 3 years ago, and I cradle him in my mind, tell him again, rub his back, and swipe his hair to the side. My mother heart thumps and I swallow back the lump in my throat, how I won't hold him again, tiny suckling in my lap, how God is here, in my mother love, encouraging my child toward maturity.
Three hungry ones now prod each other on the couch and I squint toward the pile of laundry, don't want to see it.
The day moves on so quickly, hours blurring by. The baby mouths it through the monitor; I hear him, "MaMaMa. MaMaMa," and so the race begins. I run upstairs...
I hurdle so much. Everything a mess.
And I whisper truth as I go, "God hears me too"
At the crib my tiny one who seems so slow to grow, he stands and waits, reaches. The sun hits his face as I walk, and his smile blinds me like a mirror would
.
We're a flash in the pan, all of us are, but once we are a mother, we never stop reflecting God, mother love, the way we got to them when they call, the way we pass it down.
If I really look I can see them shine.
I tell you about it so you can remember to watch, how God presses into our lives with these children, shows us faith in our capacity to love.

Down in the kitchen, the boys rip open bags of cereal-not across the top, but in a crooked slash down the side-and they don't wait on my to pour the milk. Often it spills and often I cry.
I dont always celebrate in the mess like I wish I would
But there are days when I can step back and see the glory, God pressing in so closely that I flinch like a reprimand is coming, but then a kiss lands instead.
His robe fills my house.
He loved you first, mother. Don't forget what a child you are.
God is in it all, the narrative of your childhood and how he weaves you still, even as your own babies are knit in your womb.

Sometimes there is so much mess in this journey that we can't see straight, but even in the blur, even in the doubt, there is Glory!
He hears you.
Glory, indeed.
-Amber