This afternoon I sat crying at the kitchen table, recounting a story to Daniel about a conversation I had just had with one of our children. This child is struggling, and though it isn't emergent or  new, it is still quite tender. I've heard it said that a mother is only as happy as her unhappiest child, and while I wish I were made of stronger stuff than to succomb to this contagion, so far, for me, it's been true. But after sitting for what felt like a little too long, I got up and loaded the dishwasher. Because it needed to be done. When I get up from here, I will fold laundry and pick up the elementary schoolers, help Navarra change for dance and remind her that she actually loves it when she tries to get out of it, drop her off, then pick Mirabella up from lacrosse, then drive back across town to pick Navarra up from dance. We'll come home, and I'll cook dinner, then fold more laundry, and cajole various children into taking showers or completing homework or cleaning up their stuff while Daniel is at a work event. I will do all of this despite not having any closure or answers about my struggling child and feeling a deep ache in my stomach and heart.

We await an email response from our pediatrician, but we know that his response will lead to much more waiting, only to lead to more questions than answers. All the while, we will continue loving our struggling child and try to fail forward, together.

As I'm getting older, I'm realizing how much of our adult lives are lived wading thorugh a deep and troublesome unknowing. My dear friend described her cancer diagnosis as a series of small amounts of information and large amounts of waiting. "We found a lump" (wait a week), "we think it's cancer (wait a week), "it's bad, but we don't know how bad" (wait a week). And over the course of those weeks and what became many months and what is now a lifetime of "surviving," she had no choice but to carry on living. Months of chemo and radiation and immunotherapy, yes. But simultaneously, making coffee and lunches and dinners, doing laundry and buying dog food and breaking up sibling fights and taking kids to therapy appointments. And I wish more people talked about this.

We talk about the Big Things that interrupt our lives: illness, death, birth, divorce.  But I didn't know how much of adulthood would involve something important being deeply not okay, not having enough information about the not-okayness, not having a clear plan of action, and having no choice but to get up every day anyway. So much of life is just carrying on, with an ache and an unknowing, and I really didn't know that. 

One of my loved ones lost their job recently. And though they're doing all the things a person does who is trying to figure out the Next Thing, they are also asking their kids how their day went and going to the gym and eating cereal for breakfast.  My friends committed to rebuilding their marriage after broken trust still had to buy groceries and mow the lawn and chaperone field trips and speak kindly to each other and their children. Neighbors enduring treatment and wondering if they will ever be able to have a child have to wrap gifts and attend baby showers, and what could be more ridiculous?

Someone stopped at a light next to you today is waiting for a diagnosis for their child or parent. Someone who walked by me today is caring for a family member and wonders how long their life will be on hold, all the while feeling guilty for thinking that, since all they really want is for their person to be okay. Someone I saw at the store today is navigating a divorce they didn't want. Someone at school pick up is miles away from an ailing parent and instead of rushing "home," they are walking home at their child's pace to cook dinner and coach soccer practice.

I can't get over the pain and fear we're all carrying (and I've now lived long enough to know if you're not carrying a load now, just wait, eventually you will be).  I wish I could say I've got five tips for how to handle it, but there's a reason this post features the word "learning" and not the word "how." I don't know how to do this right. I don't think I ever will. But I think it probably involves intentionally staying in the present, and actively seeking out peace within ourselves, so we are able to treat the people around us well while we wait. I think it involves mindfully noticing the things that are here--right now--that are good. For me, it involves praying like breathing and faith in a God much bigger than me or my circumstance, who loves my child much more than I could and who is never surprised. And this whole lesson would be pointless if it didn't result in increased compassion for the people around me--whether I ever learn about the burdens and uncertainty they're carrying or not.

​Whatever you're carrying today, I hope you are able to breathe deeply, despite the unknowing. And I hope you find something that reminds you of what is here right now that is still knowable and good. 

Despite owning this website for a decade and a blog for far longer, I had to reset my password to get in today. Imagine that: I couldn't remember how to gain access to the words I've written and shared. And that's exactly what it feels like. Like I no longer have access to the words. In the three years since I've published on this site, I wish I could tell you I was scribbling madly in journals or working hard on the Great American Novel or even tapping away on an antique typewriter. But the truth is sadder and less eventful: I haven't been writing. Hardly at all in those nearly three years. And even before that it had been sporadic for a long time. 

It's hard to describe the loss that's felt when something so central to your identity feels inaccessible. Maybe it's what athletes feel when they face a potentially career-ending injury, or what musicians feel when they haven't been playing? I wouldn't know. But being a writer-- which, it turns out, for me, is maybe more a condition of the soul than just a habit or activity--who doesn't write is disorienting at best and deeply discouraging at worst. I recently read in Shauna Niequist's latest book I Guess I Haven't Learned that Yet, that a way to care for your soul is to do the things you loved doing as a child. As if these things are central to who you are. I don't know why I'd never noticed before that some of the things that most deeply nourish my soul have always been there. Being outside. Moving my body. Spending time with family and good friends. Listening to music. Singing. Creating. Reading. And of course, writing. Put those together and you've pretty much got my childhood, but also the activities that make me feel happy and whole. 

These silent years have held so much for our family, for me. The've held the entire babyhood of Navarra, our surprising and delightful last baby, of which I have tried to savor every last drop. She is halfway through kindergarten now, and thriving. They've held the dreaming, building, and launch of our family's business. We are approaching the fourth season hosting guests from all over the country at our first beach house, which I manage, and we are neck-deep in the renovation of the second, which I have designed and am in the process of furnishing. So, I've ended up with a new job, one that was a dream of ours that I'm not sure I ever thought would come true. But that's not why I've been silent.

These years have also held a decade-long nearly existential crisis of faith for me. A disentaglement, really, of my actual beliefs from the Evangelical church. What had once been my entire religious identity had become a fraught relationship, then eventually it became completely untenable. I had to determine what had always been good and what was never of God and how to proceed, and it was confusing and painful and oftentimes, lonely. That it took place in a hostile political climate helped not a bit. It's taken years of thinking, praying, processing, and sorting, but I believe i have mostly been able to keep the considerable good and let go of the harmful. One of the many things I've learned in this process is how much more expansive God's love is than I had previously believed, and how much more room there is to find him. In the last year and a half, after what felt like years of wandering in the wilderness and what felt to our children like church hopping, we found a new home in a totally unexpected place. We belong to an Episcopalian church now, and for all there is for these Evangelical kids and me to learn here, it has felt like a coming home (and to our resident Catholic, Daniel, it has felt comforting and inviting in ways he couldn't have anticipated either).  On this issue alone, I believe I could write volumes. But I haven't. 

In these years my children have grown before my eyes and are now 15, 13, 9 and 5. I would no longer write about their bloopers, troubles or lives, as their stories are no longer mine to tell. Their telling requires permission and tact, and my priorities have shifted as my children have aged. I want privacy and space for them to discover and make mistakes without it all being recorded, like their dad and I got to have. The world they're growing up in doesn't offer much of that. So there has been a protective posture and a holding of so much that is precious close to my chest.

For me, 40, with its paradox of freedom and uncertainty, has come and gone. I am baffled at the aging process I didn't think would be so difficult, the physical and metaphysical parts alike. My marriage ambles into its late teens. Our life is full and busy and challenging, as we navigate kindergarten to high school and so much in between. The times when everyone is home-- and good-- at the same time, are few and fleeting far to fast for my liking. Our definition of joy shifts now, and I'm not sure I've been able to pinpoint it yet.

It's difficult to articulate the reasons for my silence because they are legion, and also they are complex. In a culture of hot takes and Twitter wars, 24-hour news and increasingly stark divides between factions, our culture doesn't value moderation or nuance or taking time to think before speaking. For all the wondering and musing I've always done, I now feel less sure of most things than I did when I was younger. Which I'm fairly sure reflects growth, but which doesn't lend itself to a consistent platform or stance in today's climate.

All this said and seemingly to the contrary, I have long suspected and recently confirmed that I need to write, not for an audience (though if you're here I'm not sure why but I appreciate it all the same), but because creative people need to create. I have known and read plenty of books by writers who were really something else. The writing made them a writer. And that's certainly an honest way to get there, perhaps far more legitimate than where I find myself. But my predicament is different. I may never become the "author" second-grade me dreamed of being. There may never be a book or--God forbid-- a platform. I'm not a writer because I write. I write because I'm a writer. Regardless of whether anyone reads it, and no matter how many other avenues I attempt to fill the void, unless and until I am writing again, something within me will always be wanting. I share this in case maybe there is an ache in your chest too; in case there is something that needs doing too.

We weren't supposed to give each other Christmas gifts, Daniel and I. Last August, we were able to realize our dream of buying an investment property--a little bungalow on the water, two blocks from the Atlantic, in a beach community we love--but renovating it has not come cheap. And, for a host of other reasons, it had been a tough year. A year for gratitude and celebration for sure, but not a year for gifts. Neither of us had any hard feelings about that. 

So, imagine my surprise on Christmas morning, when Daniel handed me a fat envelope marked "C" and said, with a shrug, "I know I wasn't supposed to, but this is for you." I pulled out a typed letter he had written, and I quickly dissolved into tears. Daniel and I aren't known for being generous with our words all the time. It's a mutual flaw. Nor is Daniel big on writing. But this letter contained words I hadn't known I needed to hear. Proof that he'd heard me, that he'd seen me, as I had navigated the other side of what had been a difficult few years for him professionally. I am not a big crier, but I ugly cried so hard that I needed to take a break, so hard that I hid my face behind the letter when the kids became uncomfortable. I didn't need anything else. He could have just given me that letter, to read over and over again, and it would have been gift enough. But he gave me something more.

If you just meet me casually or come to a gathering at my home, you might be surprised to find out I'm an introvert. I love people. But if you really know me, you'll smile and recall my awkwardness in the face of small talk, the way you can tell I'm peopled out even if I don't say it; you might notice how I disappear when I'm hosting even family to steal a minute alone. As my life has become joyfully more crowded, I have craved solitude, and it has become increasingly difficult to find. I have stated the need for time and space, even as I couldn't articulate what that meant or how to obtain it, over and over again in my 12 years as a mother, the desperation building as our family has grown and my world feels it has shrunken. Often Daniel's well-intended solution might be to plan a date for us, or a night away together, both of which I relish. But, much like you might feel after eating a delicious Chinese meal when you were actually craving pizza, at the end of those events, I'd still be left wanting. The thing I'd had was decidedly good, but it hadn't been the thing I had needed.

For this reason, the paper I pulled out next was a revelation. Daniel had booked a half-day of spa treatments at a nearby hotel for me and then a suite with a fireplace for me to enjoy  for a night by myself. I'm not sure what meant more to me: The excitement and anticipation of a day spent alone, or the fact that this man, with whom I have lived and loved and struggled for the last fifteen years deeply knows me. He isn't threatened, at least not anymore. He isn't hurt. He feels overjoyed to give me this gift, as much as I do in the receiving.

Today, I packed a suitcase just for me, drove a car with no car seats. got a manicure and pedicure, a massage and a facial. I drank two cups of tea in a beautiful conservatory while I thumbed through fashion magazines and looked forward to a night by myself in a hotel. What would I do? What would it matter?

Thus far, I have eaten crackers and cheese and the chocolate-covered almonds I told my brother-in-law I didn't have (sorry, Keith), drank wine out of a plastic hotel cup, cracked open a new novel, caught up with a friend, and dusted off this ol' website. Room service is coming soon.

I hesitate to tell you any of this, because I know it's dripping in privilege. I know this is extravagant, and it doesn't matter if I tell you it was paid for in points and Fantasy Football winnings; the point is, this is extra, and I am well aware that it's not accessible to a lot of people. It hasn't been and won't always be accessible to me. Of course, I am not saying this is the only way to love or to be loved. But I am saying, it took us 15 years to get here, and I'm not talking about money now.

I'm talking about the time it took in our relationship  to get to a point where we knew and understood each other-- and ourselves--well enough to give and accept a gift like this with the joy that we're able to. And I think that is worth sharing, despite my discomfort with how unnecessary all this is. Please, don't dream of telling me I deserve it. Of course I don't. I live a comfortable life where I have been afforded plenty of choices and luxuries, and I hold that loosely enough to realize it could all be gone tomorrow and tightly enough to know how fortunate I am. I am deeply grateful for this life, for knowing ourselves and each other better with each passing year, and for  this this man who really sees me. It is such a joy to be fully known and loved anyway. (I'm looking at you,  Justyn, who delivered my room service and did not hide your discomfort that I wanted to give you my breakfast order too. I am not leaving this room until you kick me out, and I am not ashamed.)

Almost eight years ago, we found ourselves finally, reluctantly going. For three years we moved each year: first to the outskirts of the city we loved, then 700 miles southwest to Nashville, and then another 700 miles to the coast of Virginia, 250 miles south of where we started. Leaving was hard. Starting over stole my energy, drained my confidence, tested my courage and sapped my strength. In Tennessee, for the first time, our little family was all we had.

When we moved to Tennessee, thinking it would be for two years, I dove into trying to meet people. And though I often felt lonely and out of place, I now know that I hit the jackpot. There I found a group of women who threw their doors open wide. They managed to hold each other tightly while always widening their circle.

​After a whirlwind year of growth, we arrived in Virginia, halfway through my pregnancy with our third baby, trying desperately to make an adventure for our two little girls of the series of temporary homes until we found this one. Despite joining a large and established MOPS group of nice women, I didn’t have the energy to pour myself into cultivating friendships. Our son arrived shortly after we moved into our rambling fixer-upper, and I struggled to homeschool our daughter while managing the other two little ones after Daniel headed back to work a mere five days after I gave birth. I didn’t sleep for almost fully a year, and though we had started attending a church regularly by then, it felt like our life didn't make it easy for us to connect the way we longed to.

What I’m trying to say is this: I  know what it’s like to be the one who leaves. I know how hard it is to start over—again—the energy it takes to muster another awkward meeting, wondering if maybe this encounter will be one that finally turns into a lasting friendship. I know the anxiety and work of ensuring the kids thrive in transition. I know that, unfair though it may be, it seems like the new girl is usually the one who does the inviting, the one on whom the burden to find a place falls. When you move where everyone has already found their people, there isn’t always room for one more, even when the people are nice. And that stings.
​
When we moved here, the only thing I liked about it was that it meant no more moving for a while and less travel for Daniel, despite very long hours. I had no idea whether we would learn to love anything else. I would never call any place my “forever home;” I just can’t see that far around the bend. But we really like living here and don’t have any plans to leave. Here’s the problem with that: Everyone else seems to. Because of the military, and a host of other reasons, this is a transient place. To live here is to love and to lose. It happens in cycles; every two years or so I have to say a big goodbye, not to mention the smaller ones sprinkled throughout every year. 

Two years ago we sent off a family that felt like family to ours, and I said goodbye to the best friend I’ve had the joy of making since I became an adult. It’s a strange sensation to be left like that. Because when you’re the one moving on, in order to survive, you have to summon the energy to move forward, to make friends, to establish patterns. But when you’re left behind, you don’t. You already have the rhythms and necessities of life, so you carry on, navigating around a gaping hole. I'm not at all suggesting that being left is harder, only that it's an entirely other thing I wasn't prepared for.

Maybe it should get easier the more often it happens, but that’s not been the case for us. We had the enormous good fortune of getting to live across the street from my brother and his family for the last year. We knew it was temporary, and though I knew it would be sweet, I could not have anticipated how precious it would be to watch cousins become best friends; I could not have predicted the way a sister-in-law I’ve known for nearly ten years would become so close that I can’t seem to find a word to do her justice. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I’m heartbroken in their absence. It was magic that could never be repeated, and I have cried often over the loss of it, but also over the ridiculousness of the opportunity in the first place.
​
In the wake of this loss, we also prepare to watch our next-door neighbors of whom we’ve grown very fond and a number of other friends start new chapters. We are excited that our friends get to realize dreams that have been years in the making, but still exhausted at the thought of starting over; as with so many things in life, we live in the tension of both, not or. We are weary, bruised, and a bit unsure what the point is of building this community in what feels like such shifting sand. If we are the only constant, really, why do we open our door and our hearts, again and again?

​I feel unmoored every time we are left; I feel it deeply now. But isn’t all love—and life, for that matter—tenuous at best? I am not guaranteed my health, my husband or my children even through the end of this day, let alone for a lifetime. The weight of that realization can crush me if I let it, can cause me to preserve the imperfect current condition of my heart by whatever means necessary. Maybe I won’t love again, but definitely I won’t lose either. The temptation is real, and it’s happened enough times now that I can recognize the pattern in my coping. I tuck into myself and the sadness each time. I grieve and hide, sometimes a little longer than is helpful. I decide that the amazing friends I have who are now scattered all over the country, the incredible women who would fly through the night if ever I called are enough; maybe I don’t need proximity; certainly I can’t weather this pain again.

And yet I know that’s not true.  The trick, I think, is to stay soft and open when logic says it would be unwise to do so.  If my focus is inward, if my goal is to guard my heart from further pain, then the vulnerability of venturing out into new friendships—particularly with people who are bound to leave me—is reckless and foolish. But if my focus is outward, if my  goal is to love—as often and as many and as wholeheartedly as possible— then I have no choice but to walk to my door, with a limp if necessary, and throw it open again. Absolutely I have been loved like that, and I will always be grateful for it.

A couple of weeks ago, the day after I cried in the airport drop-off line,  I hosted some friends in my kitchen for a planning meeting.  Halfheartedly, I pulled together an agenda, made a pot of soup and lit some candles. And something happened around that table, as it so often does. As we filled our bowls, I exhaled a little. My sadness persists; my fatigue is real, but the act of opening is slowly healing my heart, again.
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Five years ago, Daniel and I bought our house with a purpose; we knew we were called to open it often. But we couldn’t have known then what staying put would require of us, the courage it would take to open our hearts over and over, knowing we would be left. After an extended season of living in shallow soil, we couldn’t wait for our family to grow roots. But we couldn’t have known that calling would come with a catch: that we would be an oak tree surrounded by gorgeous annuals that bloom brilliantly for a season and are then gone. 

​We never really get over the beauty of the friendships we’ve made with people just passing through. But we hold each other tightly, reluctantly taking a step back to widen our circle. We remember what it was like when we were weary travelers, how grateful we were to be welcomed in.  So, we grieve our losses, then take a deep breath and extend an invitation again. Of course we have room for one more, we say.  Come in and sit by us, if only for a while. 

Susan, a stranger to us, leaned across the bar where Daniel and I were sharing a plate of Brussels sprouts and bacon and interrupted our conversation. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out, “but I just have to ask, are you two newlyweds?”

“No!” I laughed. “Far from it! We’ve been married 12 years. We have four children.”

“I don’t believe it!” she scoffed. “You cannot have four kids. You cannot have been married that long. You just have the glow!” she said.

“That is such a compliment,” I smiled, “you’ve made our day.”

This happened a week ago, which is important to note.

Susan told us she’s been with her second husband for 22 years, but that her friend Pat beside her, with the enormous diamond ring, had been married for 50. 

“You know how we made it to 50 years?” Pat asked, flashing that ring.  “He stays in Florida and I stay here. When he wants to come up, I go down there.”

She wasn’t joking. I raised an eyebrow at Daniel. Pat caught this and said, “How long have you been married? Give it some time, you’ll understand. You stay together by being apart.”

At the work dinner we attended next, Daniel wore the compliment like a gold star he wanted to make sure people noticed. “Guess what someone just told us?” he greeted our dinner companions, and then our house guest, once we got home. He even mentioned it to me again the next morning. And if I had written this like I intended, that next day, it would read a little differently. It might make you feel that your relationship were somehow inferior, that you were somehow inferior if you didn’t wake up thanking your lucky stars for the person sleeping next to you. I didn’t have the heart to hit publish a week ago, because it didn’t feel like the whole truth. And I’m glad I didn’t, even though the story would have been wrapped up neatly and would have presented us and our marriage in a rosy-gold light. But real life is rarely like that.

This morning, despite an all-day date on Saturday where we had real conversation and dreamed together and even took a cooking class, our footing feels shakier. It isn’t, of course, but we are navigating patterns of behavior that trip us up. He does this which makes me feel that way, which makes me say what I shouldn’t that masks what I really meant. This happened, and will continue to, even though we are doing all the hard work and all the “right” things. This year, we will mark 15 years together. Our love has been hard fought, and our affection for each other maybe even more so. This morning I’m not feeling it, despite my affection being so apparent a week ago that I fooled a stranger. The volatility of my emotions isn't a problem, but if I trusted my feelings as a barometer for my marriage, I would be in serious trouble. The first 10 years of our marriage taught us what every veteran knows: that love may be constant, but affection ebbs like the tide. War heroes don’t receive medals of honor because they survive times of peace.

Maybe what I’m trying to say is this: I am proud to have been mistaken for newlyweds more than 12 years in because I can remember how hard the hard times were, and I know they aren’t all behind us. I remember lying in bed crying when beside my husband was the loneliest place I could imagine being. I remember the Christmas I had the desperate thought that, just maybe, being alone—even with the two babies I had at the time—would be easier and less painful than staying together. I remember the tears, the hurt, the feeling that I might never be understood by this man that was supposed to love me. And I remember so many slow, reluctant slogs back to each other, the space between us feeling like so many miles. I remember when we couldn’t cobble together enough money to buy groceries or gas before we got paid on Friday, living in a couple of houses that weren’t our home, staying put through lost babies and new jobs and ruined credit and late nights and so much travel, date nights at home or on Groupons in lean times and unlikely trips to Europe for anniversaries where we felt like the luckiest and dates Daniel insisted we go on even though my heart wasn’t in it. I remember so many conversations I would rather have avoided, vulnerability and a level of trust that still doesn’t feel fair. I remember long, tense seasons, and I know they will come again. But the only way out is through, together. We won’t stay together by being apart; we will stay together by being together.
 
Those hard seasons will keep coming, since that’s what seasons do. So, we will hold this one close and treasure its beauty, its warmth, the ease we feel now—even on imperfect mornings— knowing that it can’t stay forever. But we will not grow complacent: we will keep dating; we will keep talking; we will keep showing up for each other, especially when we don’t feel like it. We will work to keep ourselves healthy and whole, not asking more of our marriage than it was meant to provide; we will rely on our faith in God, not our faith in ourselves or each other, which will often let us down. When we get restless, we will resist the urge to look outside and practice turning inward, pouring our efforts into ourselves and our marriage, not outside of it. We will fail. Often. We will forgive. But we won’t hide from each other to survive the years; we will stay and fight—with each other if we have to—but ultimately for each other, our marriage and our family.
 
We only slightly resemble those bright-eyed newlyweds.  I have to remind myself to be gentle to those untested kids who fought over so many stupid things. We were learning who we were, learning each other, learning how to live together, learning what acceptance and unconditional love look like lived out. We were learning what it means to love the person you actually have, not the person you thought he was or the person you wish he’d become. No, we aren’t newlyweds anymore. The shine has worn off, for sure. We both have wrinkles and extra weight; in so many ways there is a softness that wasn’t there before. We remember how it used to be. Sometimes we get wistful for things it feels exist only behind us—for youth, for beauty, for excitement, for spontaneity, for sleep—but we know what we have instead is truer, more solid. It is beautiful enough to make a stranger wonder, even if it isn’t Instagram worthy or poetic or perfect, it’s real and it's ours.

I don’t know if they never told me, or if I just didn’t want to hear it. Maybe I wasn’t ready. Because how could anyone ever be ready?

On communion days, I used to sing this song, Jesus’ words at the last supper set to music: “This is my body, broken for you.” I sang it in an automatic way, or at least without connecting myself to the brokenness, not really. Until motherhood and its holy awakening, its spiritual reckoning. Why didn’t anyone tell me about that, either?

Birth is a breaking open, always, no matter how you get there. There is no other way. But I wasn’t prepared for how motherhood, again and again, would break me open, lay me bare. Nothing I have encountered has been more vulnerable and strong, more generous and sacrificial than pregnancy and birth. Our bodies make space where there is none, go without, bear pain—so much pain that we think we might die--and then the breaking open, new life, new relationship, new identity. Nothing is ever the same as it was before.

In ten years’ time, I carried six babies, brought four into this world and our home. And when you look at me, I think you can probably tell. When we first had four, I would say it almost for effect; “I have four children;” I would wait for a reaction from strangers. Now, mostly, they nod as if to say, “Yes, that seems about right.” Maybe it’s the softness in my eyes or abdomen that wasn’t there before, but I look like a mother now. I feel no sadness but considerable confusion about this.
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We knew we would be giving things up in exchange for these beautiful children, right? I know we did. I knew I would lose sleep, but I was ill-prepared for how much and how long it would last and how competent I would be expected to be without it.  I hoped my marriage would shift and adjust, worried as it groaned under the weight of all these extra people to take our attention, felt relief with its eventual expansion to accommodate all this love we had made.  I knew my jeans might not fit again. But nothing prepared me for the spiritual sacrifice it would feel like to give up this body, or how readily I would do it, almost without thinking, again and again. ​

My fourth baby’s little feet slap the hardwood floors all her waking hours as she runs and plays and discovers. She says, “hi,” “dada,” “dog;” she signs, “more,” “all done,” “eat,” “please,” “milk.” Her first birthday has come and gone, and we are gradually weaning; my body is changing again.

No one told me my body would never be the same. I might return to the same weight, but everything wouldn’t be where I left it. My hips would be wider, my chest flatter. Wrinkly marks would radiate down from my belly button, marking its expansion to flattening four times. Veins I never saw before would snake themselves down my legs long after the weight is gone. My body reads like a map, but that’s not all. Studies show that a baby’s cells alter the DNA of her mother for years after her birth, and this makes sense to me; it must be true. How do you recover from creating life, then birthing it, from raising a soul you created and gradually letting it go? How do you  release a literal part of your body to make her own choices, her own mistakes while you watch—and even encourage—her to walk away from you? How do you bounce back from that?
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We couldn’t possibly, right? Surely we can’t. And so, I resolve not to bounce back. Not now, maybe not ever. At thirteen months postpartum, I have not reclaimed my pre-surprise-fourth-baby weight. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.  I do more sitting on the floor soaking in this last little one than I do on my yoga mat, more time running around with my children than running in the neighborhood. It won’t always be this way, and there is time for fitness and wellness amid the chaos of young family life—there must be—but I don’t have to figure the whole thing out today. I can smile and congratulate my loved ones—and even my younger self—when they “bounce back” without requiring it of myself now. ​

​As I gently wean this precious last baby, I think about all it took to get here. Breastfeeding never came easy to me. With my first babies, I fought to pump at work, crying when I never got more than a few ounces at a time. I cried again when my day care provider told me she thought my first baby was hungry and when our pediatrician suggested I supplement with formula. Late every night I fought sleep with our second, squeezing in a pumping session before bed to ensure she got one full bottle of my milk each day, for a year. With our son, I battled to get a tongue-tie diagnosis, fought through seven months of painful nursing and plugged ducts to nurse him for a year. And then came number four: the one who latched immediately, who nursed happily, who is reluctant to stop. When I contemplate what will be left when this is all over, when I lament the changed body I will learn to accept as my own, I cannot divorce the loss from the love in the giving.

Maybe I didn’t understand the concept of communion before, of Christ’s body being broken for us, maybe this comparison shows that I still don’t. Certainly, I'm not suggesting that the sacrifice of motherhood is on equal footing with that of Jesus. But carrying, giving birth, and nourishing my babies with my body feels like the closest I will ever come to understanding what it means. I carry the marks and scars, I live with the loss, and I wouldn’t tell you it’s been easy to accept any of it. Motherhood and time are thieves, both of them, and while the gifts themselves redeem, I still miss what’s been stolen sometimes, still lament what once was mine.
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But as I try to memorize the way this baby relaxes into me as she nurses, the way it soothes her as nothing else can, even as I look forward to my coming freedom, I mourn how I will never feel this again. I relish the closeness, the power and simplicity. Mothering my older children isn’t nearly this simple, and days are coming when I will wish I could cause myself physical pain to spare them theirs, but those days will be long gone, these lines and marks and scars on my body the only proof they were ever here.

What a privilege it has been, this opportunity to expand, to grow, to break, to heal. Motherhood is to walk with a limp: I will never look the same, never walk the same, never be the same as before my body gave itself up for these four children. Sometimes the shock of all of it still reverberates, still catches me off guard when I catch my reflection, but I would do it all over, again and again, for the joy and the pain of being their mother. In that, maybe, I see a small sliver of what Jesus meant. In these permanent remnants of the things I carried, a remembrance. The giver forever marked by the giving.   

I’m writing from my bed, wrapped in a monogrammed robe, a bridesmaid’s gift from one of my dearests, married almost ten years ago. I’m fresh from a lavender-scented bath, with a candle burning on my dresser proclaiming, “LOVE HEALS EVERY BODY,” and I think that must be at least partially true. A novel sits on my night table along with a mostly-untouched glass of good Californian red—also a gift—and an unopened bar of good dark chocolate, which was a gift I bought myself.

​This night is an anomaly; it’s not what it seems. It represents neither luxury nor pampering but grasping. There is something to be said for feeling and articulating a need, but knowing how to meet it seems to be something else entirely.

​I never knew I was the type of person who needed to be alone until I found myself never, ever alone. It’s the night before school starts back after Spring Break, and I feel no gladness over that. I nurse a vague sadness, knowing the big girls will be back to school tomorrow and Daniel will be back to traveling for work, and I will try to find the rhythm of the days and nights again with an infant who is not going gently into that good night, despite my dogged attempts at sleep training.  I will not miss the fighting or the mess, but I will miss my big kids. And though I will rarely—sometimes in the bathroom or the shower and for a couple of hours at a time in my bed—find myself alone, I will feel the gnaw of loneliness.

A year ago today, I stared blankly at a positive pregnancy test. A year ago today, I mourned another baby because it felt like so much being taken away. 

Of course, a baby does represent a loss of sorts: of control, of time, of space for self, of body, of sleep, of the ability to order life. Even then, I knew it was infinitely more than that—a gift, despite the shock in its giving.

I thought I had processed all of this before Navarra came. But then, after two weeks of strong contractions, I labored in an L&D room at 39 weeks, looked at the incubator beside my bed and mused, “Daniel, can you believe there is going to be a baby in there? TODAY?” The discomfort on the nurses’ faces told me maybe I had a little more work to do.