I thought marriage was weird.  This call to love this man wholeheartedly, to not run or quit or quiet, to celebrate and memorialize and push.  He knows my sin side better than anyone else; I know his.  No one talks to him like I do.  No one criticizes me like he does.  And still, I live for coffee in bed with him, for the silly that's what she said jokes, for the sound of him in the shower listening to a sermon.  He doesn't stop.  He builds, designs, schemes, provides.  He is the greatest definition of sacrifice I know.

I thought marriage was weird and then I had a baby.  The first night the nurses took him to the nursery and I made it an hour before I begged him back.  People dropped in daily, stayed for what seemed like hours and I was jealous for him.  I had to tell myself to share, I had to tell myself to sleep, I chalked it up to being an introvert and to loving a quiet home, but really I didn't want to share that little bug for anything.  I spent nights praying for his heart, days with him tucked into my skin, and still it went too fast.  This mama love is weird, this mama road is hard.  It is a new space filled with new self-doubt, new ways to not measure up.  It is a road full of hormones and coffee and interrupted sleep and opinionated articles.  I have learned that I have to read Proverbs.  I have to talk to my mother and my aunt.  I have to be brave and drive to the city with him.  If I don't, this road gets dizzy.

They were sewing me up when the doctor handed him to Nate and I looked at him with his furry ears and dark, dark hair and I asked for three more.  Being a mother is the sweetest, dying-est, fastest thing I know.  My emotions are not my own, my time is not my own, my body, my sleep, my freedom- not my own.  Gone is spontaneity.  Gone are my gym dates, regular dinners out, quiet spaces.  But still, when he laughs-- when he sees me and hunches his shoulders and smiles into his hands, I can't help but melt.

I told Nate the other day that I would do anything for our boy.  Anything to keep him safe and he understood.  This weird love is intense.  Marriage love is faithful and steady and present despite lack of feelings.  Mama love is all fire and full blast.  He can scream and cry all day long and I still miss him after he is asleep.  There is something weighty here.  There is something sacred and challenging and refining in this job He gave us.  It has always been that in loving His children He has grown me, and now in loving this child I can feel the crumbling, the stripping down, the battle against my sin side and I know this shifting is the greatest act of love I can give.

It is so brilliantly weird, this mama love.