It felt like we were never locked up in the first place.
Over 100 days passed and I counted every single item my 3 children were outgrowing: shoes, singlets, socks, even the little hair bows and bands were loosing their colour, breaking or loosing their match. Then the weather started to changed from freezing cold to average cold/warm and then a amazing hot weather, and panic hit knowing none of their summer clothes fits them anymore, and having a baby boy after 2 girls?… all I have was PINK!!
In the meantime I kept using the same shirts, maybe a size up or down here and there due to the back to back pregnancies. It is true all those jokes around about motherhood and how we leave ourselves last. It is, somehow, part of the package of service and care that comes with building up a family.
I was speaking to one of my followers last night about how hard it is sometimes to juggle it all. But it reminded me one more time that we are not meant to juggle it all. We are meant to offer it all to God. The day and the night. The struggles and the laughs. ALL.
So when lockdown lifted and I was able to go to the shops and try to catch up, I could have decided to go by myself as a way of “me time”. I deserve it!
But when making arrangements that morning about “babysitting” I saw my eldest daughter who next year is starting Kindy… memories came to my mind: when she was born and I couldn’t sleep because she wasn’t sleeping. When she was starting solids. Or when she started crawling, walking… talking (oh man! Non stop!)… I remember sitting with my husband late at night talking about future plans and me complaining about my exhaustiation which felt it was going to last forever… he told me something I never forgot: “She will be your friend one day! She won’t stay this small forever.”
What a statement!
I went through the “baby/toddler” hard yards with her already. She is still growing, but she is no longer that small.
So, we went shopping together. Because next year life will change. If anything the Pandemic taught me was and IS that time it’s not available for plans… the Plans changed, God’s Plans changes yours. So we need to live the TODAY with the children we have TODAY. Because they change so fast… and us too. My hair shows some greys now, my face some wrinkles that weren’t there before, my back cracks in places I never felt before, and don’t get me started with the baby stomach…
But there she is, talking to me non stop about the shoes she got for her and the ones she picked for her sister and brother, and about how nice the chips were, and how yummy mummy’s ice tea was…
And it hit me that she is growing, and I want so much to be her friend (besides her mum), for her to trust me, to make sure she can enjoy and feel safe with me… Life is about to change for her again, so all I can do is keep being her mother, not just providing what a mum provides and serving her when she needs to, but by embracing with love and sacrifice what I need to do to keep up with God’s misson for her and for me.
My hands can only do so much. God’s hands can do it all for her. So, besides all I can be for her through out the waves of change, I must be a mama who prays… more than anything else.
God bless our little saints in the make.
Liza, a Maronite Mum.
…
“There is a season for everything, a time for every occupation under heaven:
A time for giving birth, a time for dying; a time for planting, a time for uprooting what has been planted.
A time for killing, a time for healing; a time for knocking down, a time for building.
A time for tears, a time for laughter; a time for mourning, a time for dancing.
A time for throwing stones away, a time for gathering them; a time for embracing, a time to refrain from embracing.
A time for searching, a time for losing; a time for keeping, a time for discarding.
A time for tearing, a time for sewing; a time for keeping silent, a time for speaking.
A time for loving, a time for hating; a time for war, a time for peace.
What do people gain from the efforts they make?
I contemplate the task that God gives humanity to labour at.
All that he does is apt for its time; but although he has given us an awareness of the passage of time, we can grasp neither the beginning nor the end of what God does.
I know there is no happiness for a human being except in pleasure and enjoyment through life. And when we eat and drink and find happiness in all our achievements, this is a gift from God.“
Ecclesiastes 3, 1-13.
Maronite Mum 