a letter to Lily | april 3rd. | healing & motherhood

Lily. How brave and strong you are. Your head is resting in my lap right now and I’m just amazed at you. There have been so many times where I have felt that your father and I completely failed you – there is so much we did so ‘wrong’ with you, we were young and we didn’t understand how to cherish and protect your heart.  I used to be so afraid of the damage we did to your soul. I was afraid that there was something broken inside of you and that I could never fix it. I prayed and begged God for months and months to heal you, to heal us.  I was scared of how to be a good mother for you…. I knew what a good mother looked like, who she was, I just didn’t know how to be that myself. I felt like that could never be me, I felt fake.  You are now almost six years old and finally, I’m realizing what real womanhood is, what real motherhood is. By the grace and power of God, ALONE.  My heart has been so radically transformed in these past three years since I realized how all wrong everything really was. How broken you were. How broken I was. How we broke each other down, but needed each other so so so  much. We both are so incredibly much alike, it scares me to tears sometimes. I guess I just know how fragile I am, how easily I’ve been hurt. I see the person my mother is, and how much like her I am…. And I know that I can easily follow those same paths. I can easily be the loving and awesome, but often missing mother. So caught up in her own sadness and broken-ness and huge mess, that I leave you all alone. I’ve never had someone, ever, who has tried to help or ‘fix’ me. Never.  Not one woman in my life has ever been a mother or a true friend, a sister….. to me. I’ve always had to be perfect first to gain the attention of another woman.  That’s so scary for me, when I think of you.  I don’t know how to be friend, I don’t know how to build up another woman’s heart.  I know men, and I know how to love them and be their friends, men are easy for me. Women are hard.. . . and here you are . .. the spitting image of my heart and I have no idea how to treat you.  I am so scared that I’m going to let you down, because I already have SO much. The stress takes over me sometimes and I just become… silent. I pass you off like you are just . . . a thing in my life I have to feed and clothe. . . but never nurture you.  I don’t hug you everyday. I don’t kiss you everyday. I don’t look at you everyday and feel immense love for you – but I can assure you that out of all of my children, my love for you is so beyond powerful. So powerful it scares me. I have to hide it because it’s like a fire I can’t tame.  Well, enough hiding.  I’m writing this to you to tell you that I promise you, I won’t be like this forever. Every day, every day, God is moving me into a place where I AM the mother you need. I know you see and feel it. Our relationship has grown so much.  But oh my, my lovely, my sweet – I am astonished and amazed at your heart. You love when I don’t deserve it. You carry on with broad shoulders, head held high, even though I know you are lonely and you are aching for something to cling to.  And I have to laugh at myself – seriously? If you are so much like me then WHY in the world would I think that you wouldn’t be so strong and so resilient?  That’s all my life has ever been, I can’t give up on things, on people, on trying, on searching.  I keep going no matter how empty I am, in fact it fuels my desire to find peace that much more.  So maybe in the end, my being missing in your life. . . like my mother was in part for mine, . . . has only fueled your desire for God and for a steady rock and foundation that much more. You’ve been shaped to understand that humans are completely and utterly flawed.  Yet, you see that they change and evolve by the Spirit of God, and that love will continue to fight. God will continue to fight. God will continue to heal. He will heal my heart. He will heal yours. He will heal us.  He will build you up and He WILL and IS teaching me how to mold you and nurture you and. . . mother you. Just as He taught me to see my own mother as the person she is meant to be, not the flaws she has, but the beauty she has.  She may not be there for me like I need, but she’s taught me all I need to survive. She’s taught me unconditional love & she’s taught me that life is a mess, but God is always good.  And He has been so good to us.

Continue on my warrior princess. Always seek His face, always listen to love. And never give up.  ( I know you won’t). 

Love,

Your momma