Let me begin this post by first mentioning that I am not eloquent nor especially articulate, but here I go anyway.
Today I made a decision that I should have made three years ago, I decided to be a mom. Since I have in fact been a mama for nearly three years, what exactly does this pronouncement mean? I have slowly changed over this past year into something I never would have foreseen, but I am eternally grateful that this is what I am becoming. Orthodox Christianity is changing me from the inside out and I am beginning to feel human for the first time. My frantic heart and racing mind are being tempered as the weight of inexplicable peace is taking hold of me.
In order to "make a difference" in this world, I was under the erroneous assumption that I had to do something "big", become something "great", and heavens that could never mean "just being a mom" because that simply wasn't enough in my book. I spent the last three years of my life fighting my most influential role of all - being a mother. I was not willing to be affected by motherhood, I would not acknowledge that I had been forever changed by this small little boy. I tried to do all the things I did before, but just with a tagalong (i.e. my child) and I would get increasingly frustrated when I saw that it wasn't working. Why couldn't I be the person I was before I had a child? Why did I feel like my life as I knew it was over? I was dissatisfied in so many areas of my life and I was overflowing with discontentment. Enter Orthodoxy, the other thing I spent too much time fighting (my apologies to my long suffering husband)- perhaps that is a story for another time.
Orthodox Christianity is exactly what my heart was looking for, in the place that I least expected it. Slowly I am starting to see the beauty in the small things, the significance in the seemingly insignificant - in the things that our culture on the whole says doesn't matter. I, for the first time, want to be a mother. Today I made the decision to withdraw from college to be with my son; to finally, intentionally be a mother. I know that staying at home will not suddenly be full of rainbows but most likely filled with moments of weakness where I will find myself uttering the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God have mercy upon me a sinner" - and continuously being showered with his mercy and only just beginning to see how merciful he has been to me all along. I feel as though I can see for the first time, but this time I am seeing the world with my heart.
1st, 2nd and 4th photos by the bakers photography
