Being a Mom

Last night as I sat on the bed and talked to my very expressive 21 month old laughing so hard at her expressions and being overwhelmed with so much love for her that I could burst, I remembered something my mom said to me all the time as a child, "you wont understand how much I love you or why I the things I do for you until you have children of your own one day." There was some major wisdome in that statement. There is no greater love and at the same time there is no greater pain. Being a mom is the greatest and hardest thing I have ever done. I look at her beautiful face when I rock her at night and wonder how I got so lucky and what I did to derserve this precious wonder that God gave me. But with the amount of love comes the pain that you feel when she gets hurt, or is sad, or you think about her growing up so fast or even terrible things happening and how you would live without her in your world. The job of being a mom, comes with so many emotions. I never knew I could cry for no reason at the thought of her, or feel such frustration when she is choosing to disobey or throw a tantrum, or the fear I feel when she hides under the end table of the couch and I am yelling for her thinking she walked out of the house on her own and has been kidnapped. There is an amazing amount of rational thinking that comes when they are bleeding from a skinned knee and you bandage it and try to make it "not such a big deal", and a glorious amount of irrational panic when they are about to step off a curb and fall and you cant get there fast enough. Being a mom is the best "job" I have ever wanted to do. I hate picking up applesauce thrown on the kitchen floor, or changing smelly diapers, but if those are job duties of being a mom then I will change a million diapers and find "joy" in mopping the floor! Yesterday was my second year of being a mom and although her daddy bought me flowers and made me a card the greatest gift was hearing her little voice on the monitor yesterday morning or laughing at her last night when she told me about the "eecock" (peacock) at the zoo. There was no greater day in my life than the day I met her in July. My mom surely knew what she was talking about. The thing that scares me the most is that everyday she grows and gets closer to being an elementary student who can get picked on, teenager faced with hard choices, a college student faced with even harder choices, a wife learning to take care of her husband, and a mother learning how to handle a love that exceeds your heart and thoughts, and I dont know how I am going to endure all the pain or all the joy that these stages will bring, but I know that I am looking forward to the journey with her and that I pray everyday God gives me the wisdom and strength to know what to say and do.