in Choose Hope Today, Living Hope

Last Mother’s Day, I rushed onto the porch to tell my husband and our son that it was time to hurry and get dressed for Mother’s Day lunch, and I found this peaceful scene.

But it was only a few years earlier that I wasn’t sure I would ever be a mother. One particular memory of this time comes to mind. It was October 4, 2012, three years after my divorce. I was having lunch with a friend in New York City, and she asked if I was considering freezing my eggs. I answered that I had finally surrendered to the possibility that marriage and motherhood might not be in God’s Plan for me, and that was okay. Life would be abundant otherwise.

Now, THAT revelation only came after one MEGA divorce and a lot of therapy and prayer. I had come to understand that marriage and motherhood was an idol in my life that I was trying to worship into existence. And when I turned my face to the one true God, instead of to my quest for happily ever after, it happened. Two days after that lunch, I met my husband Scott, on the fifth anniversary of my first wedding day. And not long after, God ordained it for me to be a mother.

Marriage and motherhood has never once looked like how I had imagined it or as I had worshipped it. It is WAY messier and more difficult than my candy-coated dream, but it is WAY better than I could have ever designed it myself. Marriage took me from Nashville and my beloved tribe. And motherhood has challenged me in ways that I never knew were possible. For example, last year during a Mother’s Day photo shoot, I turned to find my mother-in-law lying on top of my child in the middle of the road to prevent him from being run over by a car in his attempt to run away from her. My copy of Strong Willed Child is well worn and dog-eared and there are times that I long for my days as a single woman. I have learned to stop praying for patience because God doesn’t just give it to you, he teaches it to you. I have learned to pray for strength and to pray for Him to make me present, like in this moment that I captured on my phone to remind me of how precious this gift is.

To my friends longing for motherhood… Begin the Practice of Surrender. I don’t believe that God gives you a desire of your heart without the intention of fulfilling it. Motherhood or marriage may not come in the form you anticipate. Just have faith and accept it, in whatever form it comes. This is Living Hope.

You are loved,

Elizabeth