The blessing of a child far defines you as a human being, more than anything else I have ever known.  In the single moment that your child is born, you suddenly go from the world being about “me” to the world being about “them.”  You hear people tell you this, you shake your head and smile the knowing smile, because of course you will love your child, this is what mothers do right?  However, I can tell you that I was not prepared for the overwhelming, bowl you over, take your breath away love that I felt when I met Joshua.  When I saw that beautiful, perfect, wonderful little boy for the very first time, I think my heart skipped a beat.  I was awestruck at the wonder of such a creature belonging to us, and amazed that the Lord could be so good to me... how did I qualify for such an incredible job as this?  I remember holding Joshua that very first night, looking at his little chest rising and falling, and thinking I must have tricked someone somewhere that they thought I was deserving of such a glorious job.  This kid had blonde hair, could he really belong to me?  It was my little secret. I held it close. I definitely wasn’t letting on that I was highly inadequate for such an honor.  I would just have to pretend... and then there was a second child.

I remember being afraid to have a second child for the longest time.  Afterall, I loved Joshua beyond words, how could I ever possibly love any other human being as much as I loved my little boy.  And then it was there again, that moment of awe and wonder; the moment I saw her beautiful little face, hers almost identical to my own, knowing without a doubt that this one belonged to me.  She looked exactly like me, my mini me, our Sweetie.  This was it, we had the perfect little family, even numbers, a boy and a girl.  Life was amazing and wonderful and everyone was believing I had this whole thing under control and knew exactly what I was doing.  I was the mother of two afterall, I was an expert at all this stuff.  Ha!  I had them all fooled.  

But of course, as is typical with life, the plans change and surprises come, sometimes in the form of beautiful little girls.  We went from perfectly even to third times a charm and this time I actually start to believe I kind of do know what I am doing, sort of, or at least I am becoming convincing enough that I have even fooled myself somewhat.  

So here I am, the mother of three children and I sit here and admit, I take this job super seriously and am sometimes over the top about it.  If I am going to continue this charade of knowing what I am doing at this job I was ill prepared for and untrained at, I at least have to walk and talk the part right?  This is important stuff!

Recently, in my continued charade, I realized that I am actually doing this and maybe even doing an ok job.  Could it be that I got this, possibly?  My daughter, a fifth grader, came home from school all excited and happy that her birthday, the big 1-1 was tomorrow.  Meanwhile, it had been a long day working on curriculum for me, my husband was out of town, and as I was making dinner I was trying to rationalize in my mind how I was going to go “buy” something for my daughters birthday at school the next day, something I never ever do.  I vowed to myself a long time ago that I would be the best stay at home mom that ever worked.  Essentially what this meant was that I would do my darndest to do everything a stay at home mom might do while working full time, sometimes not an easy feat... this included making homemade birthday treats, providing stuff for parties, making Valentines, and making sure my kids had all the help and support they needed with homework and projects and sports and whatever else necessary.  So I sat there that night trying to figure out what I could buy that would “appease” the Mommy conscious and fly with the fifth grader when she pops out with this at dinner, “Mom, one of the things I love about you is that even though you work, you still do lots of cool Mommy stuff that a lot of other moms that work don’t do.”  Of course this is followed by the ,”Can we make my favorite cookies for my birthday tomorrow at school?”   Of course, how can I deny this beautiful smiling face, the one that acknowledged my Mommy work as good?  Right?  So off we went to Krogers at 7:00 at night to buy the necessary ingredients for the favorite cookies.  

I may not have this Mommy thing in the bag, there are many days where I am reminded that I really have not a clue what I am doing... but there are also days when the simplicity of a little girls words let me know that I also have that “Cool Mommy stuff” and lets me know that at some point I went from faking it to being a “real Mommy.”

“Sometimes,' said Pooh, 'the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.” 

― A.A. Milne