“When my friends Paula and Danielle had their second daughter, I went to the hospital and held her in my arms. She was tiny and warm like a hairless cat, and she was dependent. When I looked over at her mother, Danielle’s eye told me life was about more than sunsets and romance. It was as though having a baby made all the fairy tales come true for her, as though she were a painter who discovered a color all new to the world.
I can imagine what kind of conversation God and Danielle will have, how she’ll sit and tell God the favorite parts of the story he gave her. You get a feeling when you look back on life that that’s all God really wants from us, to live inside a body he made and enjoy the story and bond with us through the experience.” (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller, pages 6-7)
Donald Miller has been my favorite writer for years now, and when I read this passage from his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, I realized that this is why I blog. Life up to now has been full of sunsets and romance. I have been blessed with a wonderful life and a wonderful love, but it wasn’t until my son, Cameron was born on March 6, 2010 that my colour blind eyes were opened to colours that never before brightened my life.
I started this journey in the summer of 2009 when I got pregnant. My husband and I had not quite been married for a year and our pregnancy was very welcomed but not entirely planned for. Our identities changed. We were no longer just husband and wife. We were a family.
This is my journey into and through motherhood. Being a mother is more than just parenting a child. Being a mother encompasses my role as a wife because there is no better way to teach Cameron how to love than to love my husband with all my being.
“Sometimes I’m tempted to believe life doesn’t mean anything at all… because you can’t prove life and love and death are anything more than random happenings. But then you start thinking about some of the scenes you’ve lived, and if you’ve had a couple of drinks, they have a sentimental quality that gets you believing we are all poems coming out of the mud.” (5)
This is my conversation. This is my story. This is me discovering this beautiful new colour that God has allowed me to see for the first time ever. This is how I am proving that life means something. This is my poem coming out of the mud.