My last post hadn’t been live for more than an hour when questions — and congratulations — started rolling in.
“So excited for you!”
“Wait — are you pregnant?”
After a moment of confusion (what? where did I say that?) and then a chuckle (ah! I see it now!), I rushed to quash the rumor on Facebook, and moved on with my day.
Mostly.
Something kept niggling at me for the next few hours, something I couldn’t quiet shake.
Why would people assume I was pregnant?
Finally, I shot off a text to a dear friend, asking that very thing. Her answer, “Um, well, you do kind of have a history of having babies, hon.”
I do?
Wait.
I do.
I have given birth six times. I have been blessed by the precious miracle of growing six eternal souls given flesh, of feeling them quicken, of being the physical vessel God chose to carry them into the world. Six people trace their first heartbeats to my womb. This is an amazing gift which overwhelms me with its sheer weight.
And in the world, to have given birth six times is to have far surpassed “the norm.” In the eyes of many, I make babies. A lot of babies.
But do you know what I realized yesterday? When I look in the mirror, my self-image is still trapped in the season of loss that defined several years of my life. Where others see a mother who seems to snap her fingers and conceive, I see the Momma who assumes that each baby is the last, blessed cherry-on-top gift of a God who has shown His mercy to her in her weakness and grief. Where others see “always pregnant,” I see that precarious line between faith and fear that is walked by a mother who knows that not every baby is delivered safe into his mothers arms. Where others see child after child, I see empty spaces occupied by babies I will never see take their first steps or grow to adulthood.
I realized that part of me has failed to fully embrace the season God has so graciously poured out on us. I have been grateful, yes. I have given praise and I have drank deep the joy, and I have trusted in His promise that He is enough. But I have not accepted — have not proclaimed — the miracle He has worked in this: since 2010, I have given birth to three children … and I have not lost one.
I will never regain the innocence that allows a mother to see a positive pregnancy test and start immediately planning for the child’s presence in her days. In a way, I am grateful for that; the reminder of God’s sovereignty is never more real for me than when confronted with the truth that I do not write the story of my days, cannot simply press into being my own desires. But I am convicted that I must, must, see myself not as damaged (as I have) nor as a woman who never misses a beat in simply adding “just one more” (as the world does). I must see myself as a child of God, beloved, accepted, and blessed with the good things, in the good timing that He ordains. Only there will the woman I see in the mirror fully reflect the glory of the God who redeemed me.