Accepting Motherhood

It’s the year 2023. You open Facebook, Instagram, or any other social media platform where images of perfect lives are readily available. You see women who are getting their doctorate degrees; opening their third boutique; or scaling their investment firm– all while managing their self-care (working out, eating well), and a happy husband (bragadocious man, he always gets her gifts and flowers) mind you.

Then there’s you. Blurry photographs– no tropical sunsets, just your food, the kids, the kitchen– and three-year-old headwrap. You just perfected your sourdough recipe. Now you’re understanding why some clothes need to be washed with hot water, and others in cold water. It’s the same old house-dress today that you wore two days ago. Your greatest recent accomplishment? Not yelling at the kids for, well, doing something that kids tend to do.

You wonder if it’s enough. You wonder if your family is as proud of you as they would be of that woman who’s becoming a doctor, or traveling the world. Then you worry, about whether what you’re giving your children will really equip them for life in this world. It’s not as though you’re modelling an ethical lawyer, a wise architect, or even a kind shepherd. You are just… mom.

I am just mom.

I don’t have a career, a degree, or any passive income. My talents are of the hardest to monetize (nurturing and writing). My daughter cannot brag, cannot answer with confidence the question, “What does your mom do?” Does she even know?

Then there’s YAH, showing and confirming to me that I will inevitably birth more children. As if the first one didn’t already wreck my entire body to hell, drive me up the wall, and become a source of drainage on what little resources I had. More? More children, now? When I still don’t have a degree? When I still have yet to accomplish anything celebration worthy in the last 7-odd years since having the first child?

Yah is funny. Not for saying, “Yes, more children, now.” But for bringing me into a job as a full-time teacher in the same season where he’s preparing me to birth again. In 2021, I had asked Him what I should pray for. To conceive was one of those things He revealed. For the last two years, I have wrestled, rejected, embraced, longed for and despised this revelation, bouncing between ‘Of course I want children’ and ‘Why can’t I have something better?’

Why can’t I be more than… mom?

I get to work. Preschoolers shout my name as a greeting as soon as I step into the classroom. Their hugs can barely wait. If it’s Monday, I am loaded with tales of their weekend adventures. They remember, four months ago, when I’d said they’re my jelly beans. They always remind me. They must be told what to do three times before they do it. They pick their noses and waste food on the floor during lunch. They lie, they’re stingy towards one another, and they throw tantrums over little things like having an assigned seat or not being the line leader. They get on my nerves and I love them.

I get home from work. I share my adventures with them with my husband. I tell him the revelations I hear in their innocent ponderings and musings. Midway through my own run-on sentence, I am in awe at the excitement and amusement with which I am speaking. I’ve forgotten my own fatigue, the dread with which I’d started the day. I sound quite enthusiastic about children for a woman who claims (inwardly, in prayer) to not want more children right now.

I bow down in prostration to my LORD, my Creator. I ask Him why? Why Lord? What does it mean? Why are you doing this? Why is this your will instead of me travelling the world, hitting the lottery, or becoming a CEO somewhere? Why is this what you want for me? I don’t hear anything. He reminds me of the first time I repented. I was about nine years old. I’d heard our pastor at church say “You need to repent” during a sermon. I did not know what that meant, but from the seriousness in his voice, I knew he was right.

I was playing “house” with my baby doll one day, playing gospel music, pretending as though I took my baby to church with me (yes, at about 9 years old). In the midst of singing gospel music as I held my Baby Alive doll, I began to cry. Overwhelmed and suddenly very afraid, I ran to my room, closed the door, and dropped to my knees before my bed. I said the words, “God, I repent! I repent, God!”

For years I still did not understand what those words meant. I pushed that memory to the back of my mind. Flash forward to 2020, when I did my first ever 40 day fast (highly recommend). I prayed and asked YAHUAH why He had chosen me. He simply reminded me of that moment when I was nine years old, a moment that I had forgotten about.

For the last few years, I’ve thought about it. Imagined myself, remembering those feelings of shame and honor at the same time. What has stood out to me the most, and what Yahuah will never let me overlook, is that when I repented, when the Holy Spirit came upon me as I worshipped… I was holding my baby doll.

Even though I repented with my lips at that age, I did not lead a sinless life afterwards. I became promiscuous, rebellious and very headstrong, closed off, and angry. By sixteen, I became pregnant with my first child. In irony but in truth, this baby doll of mine is the reason I repented… again. But only this time, it wasn’t just with my lips.

Becoming pregnant, knowing a soul would be depending on me, mirroring me, really made me pause and consider who I was, what I’d wanted. I knew I had some changes to make, sooner rather than later. So I softly began to seek out wisdom. I did not truly get to where I’d hoped to be until my daughter was about 5 years old. Her first five years were the hardest years of my life (well, does motherhood ever get any easier?). Suddenly I went from being my own person, with my own pursuits, on my own time… to a shell in a body wrecked by pregnancy and traumatized by labor and delivery (forced C-section club).

There are times when I am angry with The Most High. For allowing me to become a teen mom, or a mom at all when I had neither the wisdom nor the resources to give my child the best. Then I recall 1 Timothy 2:15.

But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.

Motherhood turned me into a different person. I do not recognize myself, really. And while the world, the enemy would have me to believe this is something I should be angry about, Yah makes it clear: this was His will. That day I repented without knowing what I meant while holding a baby doll in my hands was a foreshadowing of inevitable events that would come to pass. It was in pregnancy that I truly cried out to YHWH with sincerity of heart.

I try not to look back with so much anger or grief. Especially as I consider the stretch marks, the c-section scar, the postpartum depression that disabled me for about 3 years. What has become more outstanding, more deserving of my attention, is the fact that if not for motherhood, I would not be so kind, nurturing, humble, sober, faithful or repentant. I would not be a wife, I would not have this blog, and I would not be able to say The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is my El.

I do not know what His will is in my having more children, what His plans are. And I do not feel any more confident in my skills as a mother than I did eight years ago when I was pregnant for the first time. Each child is different, their destiny is different, the way He will use them is different. All I can do is trust my EL and find contentment knowing His will is good, pleasing, and perfect (Romans 12:1-2).

Accepting motherhood as your main calling seems taboo these days. Celebrity women promote whoredom and promiscuity to women but turn around and get married and have children (Beyonce, I’m looking at you), while their fans keep single their lyrics “I don’t need no man”. Being a humble woman is equated with being a doormat, a slave to the will of Adam. It’s even worse if you champion the idea of motherhood as one of a woman’s greatest talents.

What is wrong with embracing my ability to create life (and I ask myself this when I start to feel the shame)? If men have a natural ability to build things or be great defenders/men of war or grow an awesome beard, why aren’t they perpetually under scrutiny for embracing this? Why is embracing motherhood over career synonymous with “She cannot do anything for herself. She is living in the 50’s. Her way of thinking is outdated, and she will soon realize the gravity of her mistakes”?

I understand the fearmongering, I do. Yes, women, no matter their socioeconomic standing in life, have a higher chance of falling into poverty when they have children. This is even more so for black women, women without college degrees, and women who have more than one child. Yes, maternal mortality is high for black women. Yes, motherhood is a woman’s ultimate sacrifice. I get it. What I don’t get is the shame. That is the part that reels every proud stay-home-mom back in when she is pleased and content– the voices of modern people, namely other women, telling her that she should be ashamed of herself for… choosing procreation and domesticity.

It is not easy to ward off envy and covetousness of what childless, unmarried women have. Especially if they are educated, traveled, fit, feminine, and likeable. Sometimes I see them, and I think: you don’t know what you have. That is when I log off, turn off notifications, and quickly list things in my life for which I am grateful.

The first is always being Mom.

It’s okay to be just Mom.