I was talking to another mama of a sweet babe about the dying because, even though this is my second round, it still caught me off guard.  I must have thought that piece of myself had already died enough, was still dead?  Couldn't die anymore.  But here I am fighting back jealousy and trying to reign in my sharp, jabbing tongue.  Here I am, in one moment, blurting I love being a mom to an empty room and two minutes later melting down over my husband sitting at the table with a real plate and a real lunch that is so civilized it needs utensils and a napkin in order to be eaten.  A lunch with the word break at the end of it.

This is what you wanted.
This is your job now.
And you want two more?

All true things.  All things that my ears cannot hear well when my eyes are focused on watching the layers of myself slough off until I am left with a skeletal version of me and the capability of two things: tin man mom or fall on my knees before the throne mom.  And if I am wise enough and self controlled enough to choose the latter, I re-realize the beauty lurking inside the dying-est moments.  Because this is a truth I have knocked up against over and over through college and then singleness and then marriage and now as a mother:  When you come to the end of yourself, you tap into the power of Him.  My prayer life thrives when I am depleted.  My capacity for love doubles, triples, when I talk to Him.  And the dominos fall.

Earlier this week I was on my first run postpartum and mourning the new aches in new places, the wobbling and jiggling and the slower pace and, with Beyonce in my ears and the shoes that have run out most of the hard seasons on my feet, I pushed past the mourning  to lose myself to gratitude.  What a gift to do something hard like run.  What a gift to feel proud of yourself at the end, to look back and see how far you've gone, to keep moving.

There is something very empowering about putting down pieces of yourself in order to lift the whole family unit up, in order to really bolster it and unify it.  There is something offensive about that, I think, to the world, to the roaring lion who would like to shatter us, would like nothing more than for us to realize how unfairly spent we are, how poured out we are, how much more dying we do than others.

But on the other hand, what an honor.  What a great privilege to mother and to raise something larger than myself: truth seekers and His glory hunters and kindness lovers.  Even now, I write this with a baby in my arms, small hand on my chest, eyes locked in on my face.  Yes, this is what I wanted.  Here I am, losing myself and hopefully, prayerfully doing it well.

Self care: remembering to breathe, smile, nod hello to the refining found inside whatever season you are in.