A Mother’s Privilege

Bleary-eyed, she turned the spigot to fill up the sink and squeezed a dollop of Dawn into the warm water. She glanced at the microwave. The orange digits on it read 2:26.

Her son, just over three weeks old, had settled into a contented milky coma a few minutes before she’d come downstairs. But now she wanted to pump, and there were no clean parts to attach to the medela.

She sighed, trying not to think about anything in particular, and just watched the suds inch up over the pump flanges and bottles. The less she thought, the easier it was to get back to sleep. Ha. Her strategy rarely worked. She would be awake, unable to settle her mind, for the next hour or two, until he woke again. Then the hormones released when she fed him for the nth time would relax and lull her into sleepiness again.

Normally she washed everything before she turned in for the night, but a toddler who refused to eat what was on her dinner plate had distracted her from her fledgling routine. But this was motherhood, wasn’t it? At least with young children. Long days, late nights, early mornings, with sleep broken up into short intervals. She smiled and turned off the water. Six hours of uninterrupted sleep was a thing of the past, her pre-pregnant and childless past.

But she wouldn’t go back.

Her days and nights were sacred. Every diaper change, plate of bite-sized pieces, every breastfeeding, every burp, spit up, and minutes rocking were holy. Every minute was eternal, even if she spent her days cleaning up the same toys over and over and struggled to teach obedience and guide little but unfiltered emotions. The first few years of motherhood had been a difficult transition, but by God’s grace and patience, she was learning to look for Him and serve Him in every moment.

Right now, it was just her and God. Supposedly, the veil in-between the physical and spiritual was thinnest at 3am, and the most supernatural activity was purported to occur at this time. She smiled again. Holy Spirit certainly knew where to find her, she thought, scrubbing the inside of a bottle: in the middle of this very human and beautiful task of sustaining a life outside of the womb.