The Great Surrender

I have written much about the death of my baby, but less about mothering my living children. As my youngest living child turns eighteen and moves out of the house, I pause & reflect on the beautiful and brutal gift of mothering my first five children and my immense gratitude at being chosen for their hearts.

After 28 years, my motherhood is in transition. Many metaphors exist for this change.  It’s not an empty nest -- I am a bird launcher. I am a lighthouse instead of an anchor.  It’s a lateral move from CEO to consultant. A cheerleader, not a coach. The passenger, not the driver. A witness, not the director.

My retirement from my role as the executive officer for a large, busy family has been gradual and not always welcome. I loved being a full-time, unpaid, stay-at-home mother. I never considered any other vocation, even after years of high-achieving school performance and an excellent college degree. I always knew my children would have my full-time attention. 

To a large extent, that conviction grew from my wounds.I was a lonely child who longed for more family connection. Many hard and painful circumstances left my parents unable to give me the attunement and connection I craved and deserved.

There were many wonderful moments.  I know I was read to a lot as child, fostering a deep love for books and stories.  I remember creating my first communion banner with my mom, a denim rectangle with colorful fabric flowers and the words “God is Love” all crafted from scraps at home while she tried to hold our family together during my father’s first psychiatric hospitalization. She taught me to play jacks on the kitchen floor, a game I loved and would play alone for hours.

My father, when he was home, was attentive at bedtime, creating a game of launching my Winnie-the-Pooh through the air onto my belly in what had to be a “Perfect Swan Dive.” I joined in playing run-the-bases in the backyard with him and my brother. He taught me to love Neil Diamond, the Beach Boys, and Abba.

I was also lonely.  For whatever reason, my brother and I did not find comfort and companionship with each other through our shared childhood trauma. That might have helped. But the isolation of my upbringing fueled a passionate desire to be there for my children.  The running of their lives with structure, creativity, fun, faith, service, and love became my mission. I loved it.  I did it well. It brought me joy. I wasn’t perfect. I failed in big and small ways. We practiced “do-overs” as I learned the importance of repair. I apologized and asked forgiveness a lot.

My grandmother thought I was wasting my smarts. Others shared they would be bored “just” being at home. I heard the classic, “What do you do all day?” Have you ever cared for 5 children 10 and under, I thought. "What do you not do?"

Motherhood stretches. Breaks. Heals. Invites. Teaches. Demands. Reveals. Pulls. Challenges. Softens. Expands. Carves. Prepares. Creates. Transforms. Fulfills. Empties. Permeates. Overflows.

I watch my oldest daughter now with three children under three and I can’t remember how I did it. Was I ever that selfless and giving and exhausted and drained and relentlessly hopeful and convinced that this was exactly where I was meant to be?

I was. I loved it. I cherished the 28 years I spent actively mothering, even when it crushed me. I needed to be crushed. Parts of me needed to be opened for healing, all of me really. I mothered from my wounds. From my loneliness and fear and abandonment and unworthiness and need for attachment. There was, at times, an intensity to my motherhood that could feel like fear. My perfectionism and control could put us all on edge. I needed my family to be good and holy and connected or else the whole thing would unravel like my family of origin. That meant we were “safe” only as long as I worked really hard to keep us that way.

After thirteen years of mothering, their father walked out. The kids were 3, 5, 8, 10, and 13. Motherhood became survival. The safety of our nest had been breached by adultery and then divorce. No amount of trying on my part mattered. You can’t save a marriage on your own. The dark moments of motherhood began, the ones I had done everything to prevent and had failed.

I can see the tableau in my mind’s eye. We are seated on the floor in the family room of our “forever” home that I adored. A small, shaking circle: the youngest on my lap, the next tucked under my arm, the older three on either side. Their dad speaks. The rest of us cry. I do not attempt to make this ok. I remember the false, empty hope of my mother declaring, “But we can get a dog!” when I learned of my parents’ divorce. I did not have to pretend. I did not want this.  We would endure, but it took radical faith, that I did not yet have, to believe our lives would in any way be “better". I cried with them and promised them that NO MATTER WHAT I would be here. I would hold them and love them and listen and pray and show up and cry with them if they wanted.

Motherhood broke me when the first custodial weekends began. For years when they left with their father, I would do everything I could not to fall apart while they were packing, although I am sure my devastation filled the air. As the lock clicked on the front door and I watched them drive away, I would sink to the floor and sob. The grief overwhelmed me. This was not the motherhood I wanted, but it was the motherhood the Lord allowed. 

It was then I began my journey with surrender. Faith-filled mothers are always praying for their children, but I needed more. I needed to entrust them to the Lord. Of course, we proclaim this at their baptism, but how many of us still have our hands on the steering wheel? Releasing my children every other weekend, Thursday nights, and three weeks in the summer to an anti-faith, anti-structure, anti-ME father took radical surrender.

I couldn’t avoid doing it, but I had to find a way to live with it.

The day we told the children that their father wanted a divorce, the kids and I had gone to mass. I sent them off to the playground and knelt before the altar of the emptying church, my tightly-bound emotions beginning to unravel. How could I do this? How could he have done this? Why would God allow this?

We were the “perfect” Catholic family.  Everyone said so. Was I being punished for my pride? (That’s not how God works.) The Lord is so faithful and He gave me the grace to begin entrusting my children to Him. It was then that I finally got out of the driver’s seat of my motherhood and let Jesus take the wheel.

On September 26, 2010, we broke their hearts. Fifteen years and a lifetime ago.  My body remembers. That morning in the sanctuary after mass, Jesus still present within me, I saw myself carrying each of my children down the aisle, one at a time, their bodies relaxed in my arms with the heavy, trusting weight of sleep.  Tearfully, I fixed my eyes on Jesus. 

“I know no other way,” I whispered. “You are the only way. Take, Lord, receive my heart divided into these five pieces. Do what I cannot. Make a way for their hope and healing through this closed door of adultery and divorce. You gave them to me. I will keep giving you my all, but they are yours, first and always. I need you. Carry us. Carry them. Carry me. Restore what the locusts are eating*. I offer my sufferings for theirs. I give them to you. Guard and protect what I cannot.” Then I laid them in front of the altar, one at a time, but so close that a drop of precious blood still fell from the crucifix onto their innocent skin.

I stayed in my pew, weeping, while I prayed through this entrustment, begging for courage, strength, and hope. I don’t remember the rest of the day. Only that morning. Mass. My vision. Our broken circle of broken hearts.

At some point he left. At some point we kept going.

My motherhood learned to fight for goodness, truth, and beauty. To fight for mass. To fight for boundaries. To fight for what was and was not appropriate. To fight for what my children needed and deserved. I wish it wasn’t a fight. I wish he had partnered with me on what was right for our children, but our perspectives were at either end of the spectrum. I chose Truth with a capital T and he had a tattoo that read be only true to yourself.  There is a vast chasm between those viewpoints and my children often floundered in those waters.

Motherhood healed. Motherhood strengthened. Motherhood softened. Motherhood learned. Motherhood yielded. Motherhood wept and forgave and showed up and raged against injustice and stayed the course.

The Lord healed me so that even though Truth never changed, the way I showed up with it and for it was less terrified, more trusting, more surrendered, more welcoming, more accepting that they must each find their own way and that suffering is always a part of the journey.

Show up. Love. Repair. Listen. Repeat.

My motherhood survived a season of blame, slander, persecution, would-be-lawsuits, accusations, and cruelty. Stay the course. Show up. Love. Grow in humility and trust. God sees. God knows. It is enough.

Motherhood trembled through lawyers, psych wards, rehab, hospitals, and bedrooms prematurely empty. Motherhood rejoiced through homecomings, grace, forgiveness, growth, and second, third, and fourth chances.

Motherhood is the long game. The prize is not mine. The victory is in having given it my all, having made amends for my failures, and basking in awe and wonder at the brilliance of beauty in these five precious babies, all adults now.

Motherhood is not credit, but the honor and privilege of being chosen for this sacred task.

Motherhood is emptying so that I may be full of grace and do my daily best to show up with His hands, His words, and His heart.

The paradox of motherhood is that it takes all of you, but it is not all you are.

Motherhood takes the fullness of your body and then your heart, but those early empty weekends taught me that I had to learn to live periodically without the noise and demands of my children. I had to be more than just a crushed shell of a mother in their absence. In faith, I knew the Lord did not allow this cross so that I would shrivel into a bitter husk while they were gone.

I began the Journey of the Beloved before it even had a name, before it became my mission. The Lord called me to let Him love me through the devastating silence of those weekends. He led me to beauty: in His creation and within me. I had to wrestle with and sift through the mountain of lies and accusations spewed on me. I had to test what, if any, had any substance and take that to Jesus and let the rest float away like chaff in the wind.

Motherhood filled my life, but it wasn’t the only layer. I was also beauty and hope and wildflowers and laughter and hiking and wonder and music and worthiness. The Journey of the Beloved was slow, painful, and simultaneous to my growth and healing in motherhood.

I do believe we as women can have all that we are created for, but perhaps not at the same time.

There are seasons of motherhood that come and go.  The vocation of motherhood remains but its requirements shift. This is a new season, the post-bird-launching one. I have already stepped into the callings that take up much of the space that motherhood claimed. I am imperfectly allowing my young adult children to lead the way with how much connection and communication they want to have. I am balancing how to still be available and learning to be okay when I can’t be.

We are finding our way, my birdies and I. I sit in honor and awe of the journey we are on together, grateful for the abundant gift of being a lighthouse, cheerleader, consultant, and witness to these five precious souls that call me Momma.

We are all called to the great surrender, whether or not you are a mother. May you let yourself be loved as you too learn the art of loving and letting go. Amen.

*Joel 2:25