Giving Up the World
And Gaining a New One
by Catherine Rose
in Family
on Wednesday, March 10, 2010 6:00 AM
I had plans, good ones. The world was a mess, I was 25 years old, and I was going to help fix it.
I had seen much of the world, through travels in Honduras, India, and Bosnia, and wanted to pour myself out to ease the pain that I saw on so many faces. It seemed to me that I needed a graduate degree for this work, so that I would have the credentials to organize large-scale efforts to bring Christ and His healing to a world so full of despair.
(You are allowed to chuckle at my hubris. I certainly do now.)
I applied to various graduate programs and was accepted many times, but life always seemed to get in the way of my academic aspirations. And then last year, I found myself a 20-something woman, married, with three adopted children. My plans for ministering to the world seemed increasingly ephemeral, and yet I continued to hope.
Our future can so rapidly dissolve, however, when our lives are brought to a halt. Anything can make us stop. In my case, it was giving birth for the first time.
One day, I was the adoptive mother of three toddlers, my life crammed full with just enough space to remember the plans I had for a big important life. The next, I was a mess of hormones and tears, feeling weak as the sweet newborn nursing at my breast. I was reeling. Perhaps childbirth is not so momentous for most women. But, because I had been such a task-oriented woman with her life packed full to the brim, I was knocked from my proverbial horse and straight into the world of full-time motherhood.
You might wonder why, after a year of full-time mothering, I was knocked into the world of full-time motherhood. The truth is that I had mentally resisted that world since becoming a mother —because it was a hidden world, a lonely one in which I would lose touch with the world that I held in my heart. The fact that I was an adoptive mother made that resistance easier.
There is something about adoption, especially adoption of children who really need homes, which can allow one to think of oneself as a bit more of an activist than a mother. I loved my twins, certainly, and delighted that I was finally a mother. But, I could still view my motherhood as something of a service to society; we were giving a home to these needy children and helping to break their socio-economic cycle.
But, becoming miraculously and surprisingly pregnant led me into motherhood in an entirely new way, a chemical and physical way that knocked my socks off.
No longer could I hold onto my big global plans. Delirious and recovering from childbirth, I could do very little. Unsurprisingly, this was a very happy development for my children. Because they did not rejoice in having a mother who could do. They rejoiced in having a mother who was, a mother who would simply sit on the floor so that they could climb into her lap and read a story.
I am frequently forced to re-learn: When I accept the truth of my life rather than longing for something else, I find joy. Pangs of joy so fierce and deep that I nearly can’t breathe sometimes.
I am beginning, finally, to settle into a new normal, a normal where I put away my old to-do list and allow myself to enjoy life with four sweet children. It is still often difficult; the motivation to make big plans and do big things is so strong.
Yet, if I allow the Holy Spirit to teach me, I think that I will discover that my deepest fulfillment is found not somewhere out in the big world, but in the hidden joy that rests in my little family.
—Catherine Rose is a mother of four. You might remember her and her husband Devin from this post a while back. They blog at St. Joseph’s Vanguard and Our Lady’s Train.
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