Blood Or Milk?

I finally made a decision.

On Saturday, I put all of my baby clothes, bibs, strollers, high chairs, monitors, bottles, changing tables, toddler beds, bedding, burp cloths, and buntings up for sale in my front yard.

Some decisions are not easily made.

I laid in bed for a very long time on Friday morning. Mostly I was contemplating whether or not I was REALLY ready to close the door on a chapter of my life. For as long as I can remember I've always known that eventually I would be a mother--even when I put it in writing about a thousand times that I would not. In some ways, when I finally did decide to become pregnant with Jack, it was literally a concession. I didn't want to do it, but I didn't see any other way.

When we came home from Ukraine without the girls--I've never had such a hole in my heart. It felt like somebody dug a pit and I didn't know how to fill it. Even now, looking back, I know that there are wounds that time will never heal.

But I wanted to fill that hole. I wanted to go back in time and make myself whole again and I knew that the only way to do that was to move forward in the only way possible. And that's why I'll always know that it was a concession.

And my pregnancy was God's way of giving me a good slap in the face for being such a be-yotch about the whole thing.

And the post-partum depression, suicidal thoughts, and Lachlan's severe handicaps were His way of humbling me into absolute submission because I still didn't have it figured out.

And when I pulled all EIGHT of those 50-gallon Rubbermaid tubs off of the storage shelves and started to go through them I just stared at all of it in disbelief--where does the time go?

Another blogger wrote last week about how in the Book of Mormon, Jacob speaks about the experiences of life, "and also our lives passed away like as it were unto us as a dream." I know exactly what he is talking about. It does seem like a dream. The dream of motherhood, where we have the ability to remember only the wonderful moments in the middle of the night when your little baby is sleeping on your chest. It fills all of the empty holes and yet, it threatens to create another one when we try to move on to another phase of life. The one where we trade onesies for training bras and cell phones.

I went piece by piece through every bin. I sorted all the clothing by size. I smelled the special small baby outfits and cried a little when I couldn't detect any of the scent that my subconscious ached to have again, just for a moment.

And then it was okay. Because I know that this hole will be filled with something new. And I will probably love it even more because I will be operating on a full-night's sleep and eventually they will be able to buckle their own seat belts and get their own glass of water--and if it's God's will--even stop peeing the bed.

Even these days will pass by as if in a dream.

I keep coming back to this:

Blood and Milk

By Sharlee Mullins Glenn

I dreamed of Oxford...

(spires, a thousand spires, endless lectures, musty halls

a solitary self in a Bodleian expanse

A good life, my dear Wormood. An orderly life.)

then awakened to laundry

and things to be wiped

(countertops, noses, bottoms)

How did this happen? And when, exactly?

Time flows, it flows, it flows

and there are choices to be made:

left or right?

paper or plastic?

blood or milk?

There's freedom in the bleeding;

bondage in the milk - do not be deceived.

Ah, but it's an empty freedom; a holy bondage,

A sweet and holy bondage.

Five times I chose the chains, those tender chains,

(though once will bind you just as well!)

and checked the crimson flow.

Suckled while dreaming of Trinity Term

but awakened, always awakened, to the laundry

and to that small and cherished captor at my breast.

I love "there are choices to be made". Do you feel it too?

I'm so very, very grateful for the choice I made to yield--to concede. Those were times of bondage that I wouldn't trade, memories to be held in the deepest part of the heart.

And now it it over.

....pause for one more tear.

....then listen for a sigh of relief.