Storms and Lullabyes

God hears the lullabye
In a mother’s tears in the dead of night
Better than a hallelujah sometime
-Amy Grant

She has developed a sudden fear of storms. This includes not only lightening and thunder, but rain against the window; she wakes up screaming and crying, wanting to be held until it’s over. Let’s just say the weather forecast has taken on a whole new significance.

I was holding her last night and thinking about how odd it was that she’ll never remember any of this. How much do you remember before grade school? I have a vague memory of my dad holding me at night and walking through the house. Of riding a motorcycle in Taiwan. Of taking my first step: really just a hazy picture of my parents next to me clapping while I walked to a plastic purple chair. That’s really about it. I don’t remember sleeping in a crib. Or wearing diapers. Or crying at night.

It’s strange, doing something for someone who will never even remember that you did it. I’ve rarely ever done that in my life. It brings out a sort of discipline in love. Hoisting my tired self out of bed when she cries, cleaning up after spills, nursing through mastitis (which ranks right up there with labor). This exists of course in marriage, but a husband gives you lots more breaks, and listens to you complain, more than a toddler does.

But I think this is why motherhood is, as a friend put it, such a sanctifying experience. It forces you to have to rely on God or lose it. It makes the attitude and spirit behind your actions very obvious. It’s hard to pretend for very long. But the more you do loving things, the more you love, and it carries a deeper, fuller meaning because of all the acts of thankless service or sacrifice behind it, which of course is the type of way that God loves us.

And it makes motherhood more of something in the moment as well. Because even if she doesn’t remember, I will. I’ll remember the heavy weight of her in my arms, her legs splayed to accommodate my belly, one arm tucked into her side and the other curled around my shoulder, while the rain patters outside. If I look hard enough, the entire day is a series of these moments, that no one else can know and no words or pictures can capture. She isn’t really mine, but these moments are, like little gifts wrapped in the tedium of the day.