Nobody tells you.....

Nobody tells you, how it will feel.  

How having a baby grow in your stomach will change everything.  How love will fill your heart and overflow into your life because of these little alien looking creatures that you helped create. 

You just can believe how a new life changes everything about your own life, until you live it.  That first baby of mine he saved my life.  He stopped my life in it's tracks and that was a good thing. Everything became about bringing him into this earth safe and healthy.

No one can really make you understand how it feels the first time you feel the flutter of life and your heart nearly burst.  I can remember it like it was yesterday, laying on my bed with my hands on my stomach marveling at the tiny little movements I could feel.  A butterfly doing flips in my stomach.  How I cried and said, that I would do anything for this little life.

Nobody can explain the love you feel the first time you lay eyes on your baby.  The sudden overwhelming love I felt each time I delivered one of my boys.  Staring into their little faces and wondering how such an outpouring of love could even come from my heart.  I had never known love like that, I had heard of it but couldn't understand it until they were born. Then I worried about when the next one comes along, could I have that much more love for the next one. It is such a supernatural experience, that kind of love.  I felt it for each one, an overwhelming love like no other.  I didn't just love them, they were a part of me. I loved them in that first moment of seeing them with a passion that was instant and burning.  My heart cried out, I will always love and protect you and I always have.  At least as much as humanly possible. 

I loved kissing boo boo's and bath time, loved playing cars for hours out on the grass, loved when each of my boys said they wanted to marry me when they grew up, those were the sweetest of times. Watching races and football games, putting my cheer-leading skills to work.  It was not always easy, tons of broken bones and scary nights waiting to hear their cars pull up.  There was fighting, screaming and crying but it was all rooted in love, in protection.  I could have done better, I learned as I went along.  I always said Justin was my guinea pig.  I never quit loving them with the most ferocious of loves.  I would cry myself to sleep in prayer for them, battling for their safety.  Pleading God's mercy over their lives as they struggled to become men.  They all made a few wrong turns, my love never quit.  Boundaries had to be set; groundings and cars taken away.  Nobody tells you how difficult it will be, how that love will be tested, how those babies will leave you and begin their own lives.  How they don't want to marry you, they don't even want you to hug them.  Nobody tells you how they may break your heart, or make you so proud you can't stand it and often both.  Nobody can tell you because when they are babies you wouldn't believe it.  You would say as I so often did, my kids will be different.  They are different but not without their own bumps and trials, not without some heartache.  Your grace level for parents gets a true upheaval when your own become teenagers. 

When you look into their tiny little baby faces you think you will be able to protect them from the heartache of a broken world.  Then you will hold them when they are grown and crying and your heart will break into a thousand little pieces because you can't change the pain they are feeling. 

You can't.  You just can't.  So you continue to love them with an unending love that says I will pray for you forever, I will be your mother always and I will fight for you till the day I die, I will always love you more!

Being a mother is the greatest love and joy I have ever felt, its a roller coaster of hope and fear, frustration and laughter, it gets upside down and sideways but you learn and you grow and you never, ever stop loving them with a ferocious love that they will never understand until they have children of their own.   

Mothers Day will forever be hard for me, because one of my boys will not call or send a card, he won't be there for church.  He will always be in our hearts, but there will be none of the "greatest hugs ever" from the oldest boy.  But, it also will be joy filled because being a mother never ends and it is my greatest joy and there are still boys to hug and boys to love and one day grandchildren(we live in hope)!

Motherhood is worth every tear cried and every cheer shouted.  I would do it all again for the joy of the journey. 

Love you my sweet friends, thanks for reading.

Jacob, Justin and Luke...I love you forever, like you for always, as long as I'm living my babies you'll be.