A typical morning in the Mauss house looks a lot like this...
Coffee cups mingle with empty baby bottles, littering the computer desk and counters. Renegade toys wait for just the right moment to roll beneath your feet-- a surprise attack! Occupying the spot where my kitchen table once stood is a too-bright exersaucer promised to make my baby smarter and stronger while buying me an extra five minutes in the shower.
Yes, a lot has changed here in the last seven months. Would it be too cliche of me to make the leap from the external changes to the internal ones?
It's true. It's understatedly true. We are different people today than we were seven months ago. Our neighbors likely haven't noticed the change, but there may as well have been an earthquake in this very apartment. We have been shaken-- fundamentally altered-- by a person who, until recently, didn't even know she had feet.
In reflecting on this last year, I'm forced to confront some ugliness in myself. I'm airing it here as part of the healing process, and because as a Christian, I'm compelled to authenticity.
It's no secret to my close friends and family that Fable's birth was hard on me. It sent me to an emotionally desolate place. It was as though my nerves were exposed and every infant cry sent shock waves through my body. My broken body was taken captive by my broken mind, leaving me riddled with insomnia and panic.
It was a dark time.
Many a doctor asserted that I had postpartum depression, and at the time I attempted to embrace the diagnosis. To a degree, I think maybe they had it right. But instead of finding solace in the diagnosis, I felt unsettled. Therapists attempted to assuage my angst by painting me as the victim of hormones and biology. But there was something wrong. I knew the torment I was feeling wasn't simply because my body's chemicals were out of whack.
And as strange as it is to say this out loud, I knew that this feeling of anguish wasn't BAD. It wasn't something to numb away with prescription meds, although for a time I tried. God's voice grew clearer and clearer by the day, until it was a roar I couldn't drown out: This wasn't an affliction, it was God's way of offering redemption.
For the first time in my life, I was forced to stare my own selfishness in the face. Every "trial" I had ever faced in the past suddenly looked so trivial. And what had I really learned from them, except how to cloak my sins in denial?
Suddenly looking back over the years showed events in a different light; moments of "selflessness" I would have once counted towards victory revealed hidden motivations, pride and self-seeking. The acts of kindness I bestowed upon others had often been watered down with laziness or half-heartedness. Through it all, my convenience came first and reputation came second. On my particularly "godly" days, perhaps His glory factored in somewhere.
And God, I think, had bigger plans for me. He was tired of my self-centeredness, my self-pity. He was tired of my myopic narcissism. Did I have postpartum depression? Probably.
And it probably saved my spiritual life.
In the form of an infant came God's offer of true restoration-- not the glossy faux-finish I had plastered on my soul years ago. It was during those sleepless nights when my body and mind were enslaved by insomnia that I came crawling back to the Christ I hadn't realized I had left.
While my infant cried out to me, I cried out to my God. When my child needed my comfort, I needed the Father's. When she required nourishment, I begged for the living water.
I vividly recall laying in bed, Bible open next to me, staring through the ceiling and praying, "Father, have I become so accustomed to the ways of this world-- to its comforts and daily pleasures-- that I have crippled myself spiritually? Have I become the unthinkable-- a woman so bent on her own satisfaction that I have no ability to mother?" It was a hard question to ask, and the answer was harder to receive.
I was unfit in so many ways.
Soak in that for a moment.
I had become so steeped in my OWN desires, so accustomed to immediate gratification, that I was unfit to mother.
And God knew this from the dawn of creation, but He gave me the blessing of a beautiful baby anyway.
I am convinced now that I look back on it that God knew exactly how hard that season would be for me. He knew the tormented, chaotic state my soul would enter into and He brought it about anyway. Why? Because God is more concerned with our callings and less concerned with our comfort*. And Lord, do I thank Him for that.
It all seems so distant now, but yet so clear and fresh. The last seven months have been the hardest of my life. I have never been challenged so much to give of myself. Where once my soul was a barren land, now there is a storehouse of patience and generosity that I daily draw from. God deposits into it all the things I need to be a suitable wife and mother. He has altered me, as I said before. Because He loved me enough to hurt me, I am now capable of loving my darling child.
Yes, externally, our home is a wreck. Toys strewn about. Dishes waiting to be washed and put away only to be dirtied again. Bed sheets tousled liked contained waves. Hearts broken and remodeled, refurbished by a carpenter who works relentlessly at our restoration. Our home is a wreck, and more beautiful and vibrant than ever before.
Certainly, a lot has changed around this place...
