I've been feeling like my recent posts have me sounding like a negative nancy. Part of me thinks that is a result of writing my posts at the end of the day, when I am out of gas and the most fried version of myself. Between that and having had a string of difficulties lately, and having a lot of those difficulties be so far out of my control. I struggle so much to feel like I am properly caring for and protecting my children. Having them be sick has really magnified for me how painful it is to feel helpless to "save" my children.
Cognitively I understand that I don't need to protect them from everything, and that I can't expect to prevent all bad things from happening to them, and that trials and hardship are a necessary part of the human experience. Yes, my mind knows all of those things. But my heart has yet to internalize these messages. It tears at my heart to see my babies suffering.
For some reason, in the last fews days, the magnitude of the eternal nature of being a mother has hit me heavily. That there is no end, no respite, no way to take a breather. My heart will never not ache at my children's pain. I will never not worry for their well being. Somehow, I have to learn to manage all those pains of my heart.
As a Mormon I believe that I have the capacity to be as God is. Which means that if God can somehow manage to have perfect and immeasurable love for all human kind, and yet somehow also not be ruined by the pain that comes from loving that many people that much, then there must be a way to do both. It must be possible to love fully and completely, without restraint, without forging numbing protections to your heart. To feel all of the joy and all of the pain.
A big part of me thinks that Him knowing things that I don't is a big part of it. I've thought for a little while that if we took our children in to get immunized, and we didn't know anything about it, we just watched with no information, all we would see is our children getting stabbed with a needle and crying in pain. Yet because we can understand the protective power and life saving possibilities of those shots, we bring our children to the doctor. We willingly submit them to being stabbed with needles.
Maybe if we saw all of our trials with the proper perspective, with the same lens that our Heavenly Father sees them with, we would see more than that painful prick of a needle, we would see salvation.Labels: Motherhood