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mother’s day

mama day 2012.

[…I’m a week late in posting this — unfortunately my blog time has been cut in half!  But I’m hoping to update it at least once a week from here on out.]

You won’t usually see me in photos — let’s just say I’d prefer to stay behind the camera.  However, after Dhara was born, I started thinking that for posterity’s sake, I needed to be purposeful in being in the occasional family photo, like here and here.  Even though I dislike being in photos, I think it’s important that my children have photos of us together.  I want them to have photos of a young mama with her young kiddos.  There’s something beautiful about seeing a picture of your parents when they were young parents.  I want to make sure that in all the hustle and bustle of this life, my kids have a few pictures of me to look back on — even if it means only once or twice a year like Mother’s Day and Christmas.

Mother’s Day this year was pretty swell.  It started off on Saturday with Greg’s parents coming into town and cooking us an amazing meal of grilled barbeque and teriaki chicken, grilled steak, grilled pork tenderloin, beans, quinoa, cornbread, lemon meringue pie, cherry pie and a large bowl of delicious fruit.  What a blessing that was!  Thank you Dad and Mom, it meant so much to us!

On Sunday (Mother’s Day), we ended up staying home from church because the boys have been really fussy due to gas.  Greg let me get a few hours of rest while he watched the boys — a real treat since sleep is so hard to come by these days!  I was also given the gift of an awesome, awesome retro pistachio colored Kitchen Aid Artisan stand mixer.  And lastly, my darling husband and daughter got the garden ready for this year’s small crop — there was no way I could do it with the twins this year.

love how my little busy bee, dhara, is perched on the edge of the garden bed

[If we’re friends on Facebook, you may have noticed my love for Instagram.  Been using it everyday since I got the app a couple weeks ago — it’s such a great way to capture life everyday, because for the most part I don’t have a camera handy, but I do have a cell phone!  Love it!]

Mother’s Day got me thinking…  In the 4 years we’ve been married, we’ve been blessed with three children.  I always wanted kids, a large family even.  However I must say that child rearing is hard — the hardest thing I’ve ever done — and my kids are young, all two and under!  The challenges only get bigger from here on out.  Motherhood means laying my life down for them on a daily basis — not an easy task!  It takes discipline and selflessness.  And yet, there’s a joy that comes when I look at my children, even though I know life isn’t easy.  There’s a love that grows for them every single day.

I feel so blessed to be called a mother, and be given such a cool and out-of-this-world-rewarding job to care for these little treasures. [2011, 2010].

mama day 2011.

Sometimes I look at my daughter and I can’t believe that she’s mine, or even that I’m her mother.  Why would God trust me enough to entrust this special little person to me?  How is it that this is my second Mother’s Day?

I say all of this with a heart full of gratitude, I feel so blessed.  I’ve always wanted to be a mom, but I never knew it would feel like this — this intense love, care, concern, worry, wonder, joy and again, love, love, love.  While there are so many more feelings that swirl through my mind + heart, love precedes them all.  So amazing how as a mother you can somewhat fathom the Father’s love for us.  He’s given it to mother’s especially — the ability to love so unconditionally, so wholly, and so fully, so much so that we give up our lives for this love, so much that it hurts.

Being a mom has really challenged me to live life and live it with no regrets.  I’ve made many mistakes in my 29 years and I have a long list of regrets, but I don’t want them passed onto my daughter.  I want her to have the example of a mom who lived a real life — being honest about my mistakes, outspoken about my faith because it is our life, and preparing her in the lovely ways of being a virtuous girl, woman, wife, and mother.

“Suddenly, through birthing a daughter, a woman finds herself face to face not only with an infant, a little girl, a woman-to-be, but also with her own unresolved conflicts from the past and her hopes and dreams for the future…  As though experiencing an earthquake, mothers of daughters may find their lives shifted, their deep feelings unearthed…” Elizabeth Debold and Idelisse Malave

I love reading the mama blog, Resolved2Worship.  She is so honest about her faith, her mistakes, her children, her joys, and her Jesus.  It’s so refreshing to see people who really truly live out what it means to be a follower of Christ.  What she writes here nicely sums up my heart:

“A daughter’s need for her mother is biologic, and it continues on her whole life. Not only was my mother’s body the source of life for me but it was her face that I looked to, to see how I was doing.  By seeing my mother’s eyes and experiencing her response to me, I learned crucial first lessons about my own worth.
 I’ve no doubt my daughters look into my eyes searching as well — watching my response, determining their worth.

The art of mothering these girls is to teach the art of living to them.  Even more importantly, it’s to teach them where real life comes from: Life in Jesus Christ.  I am still learning.  I am still growing.  With all my heart I want them to know we’re on this journey together – to become more and more like Christ.  To humble ourselves and recognize our great need for a Savior.  And to rejoice in His unconditional love, His undying acceptance, His great sacrifice so that we might know eternal life and live our lives as daughters of the King.

Along with encouraging femininity in my daughters and enjoying all things lovely and beautiful, more than that, I talk with them about what true beauty is: INWARD, THE HEART.”

“May motherhood never be merely defined by our chores, or duties, our responsibilities, our discipline, our fears, our failures, our schooling choices, our rules, our regulations, our busy-moving about, or in something so crazy as the amount of children our body might happen to produce, or not produce.

Let it be defined by the passion we pour into discovering who our children are.  Let it be defined by the willingness we have to be where they are, do what they are doing, love what they are loving.  Let it be defined by the knowing and comprehending of the undeserved blessing we have in just being by their side.” [source] [2010].