When Our Babies Cry

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There was a bit of a back up on the way to school this afternoon, so when I pulled up to get Magoo, she was already out waiting with the other kids for their moms.

I walked up, and from a good 25 feet away, I could tell that something was wrong.  If you’re a mom of a school aged kid, you know the feeling.  You tense up as your mom radar is going off, praying that it’s skin and bones that have been injured and not a heart.

Sure enough, as soon as she saw me, her composure started to dissipate, and the lower lip that was starting to tremble was giving way to full on tears.

As I walked up to her to give her a hug, I noticed the problem.  She had a little cut on her lip, and she was holding a wipe up to it to stop the bleeding.

I bent down and looked in her eyes, and she told me the story of how she had just been running on the playground a few minutes before and fell, cutting her lip.  It was only a small little cut, but to a six year old with her mama’s flair for the drama, it might as well have been an amputation.

I got her in the car, and she settled down.  But as I was pulling out of the parking lot and driving home, I almost started to cry.  But it wasn’t from sadness.

Those moments — those moments when you can see them holding back the tears from the world — and they see you, and they see their peace and their comfort and their home and the floodgates open and the sobs start coming…

For me, those are the moments.  Those are what motherhood is about.

During those precious times when we see the tears that are just for us, we know we matter.  We know we have created a sanctuary.  We know we are the sanctuary for another person.

And so this afternoon, when Magoo sobbed into my shoulder, I felt that I had been given the gift of my lifetime.  The gift of a little heart and a little soul that trusts me completely.

No one wants to see their child hurt or cry, but I think all of us mamas feel a huge sense of relief when we see it happen because we know they share with us, we know they feel comfortable, and we know they are telling us the secrets of their hearts.

She started crying again this evening.  The day had just been too overwhelming for her with the cut and the fights with her sisters and the dairy she couldn’t eat and the little boy who saw her get hurt, evidently mortifying her.

And so she was just tired and by 7:00 pm, she had nothing left to give.  And so we went upstairs, just she and I, and we read a chapter of Charlotte’s Web.  By the time we were done, she was back to happy and I was back to feeling peace.

And I write about this day because it’s fresh in my memory, but I won’t ever forget it whether it’s written or not.  Just like the other times the tears have come after school.

At most moments, if I look, I can find the blessings in motherhood.  But the thing is that it’s very rarely the times when they do something for me.  Instead, it’s the times when I get to be mom for them.

Because to me, mom is a big thing.  It’s where security and trust and comfort and confidence and peace lie.  And to get to be that for someone…

It breaks and makes my heart on a daily basis.

So to my three beautiful little girls,

Thank you for making me mom.

Thank you for trusting me with your hearts.

Thank you for seeking me out when you are happy and sad and excited and scared and every feeling in between.

Thank you for making me laugh.

Thank you for making me cry.

And thank you for showing me your eyes — the eyes that dance, the eyes that know, the eyes that love.

All those years of praying for you, I never really actually knew all I was in for when I was to become a mom.  But you three have shown me and continue to show me.

Sometimes we have bad days.  Some days I lose my temper.  Some days you lose your temper.  Some days we’re sad and some days we’re lonely.

But no matter what, through all the days there are, you fill my heart until it feels like it will no longer fit in my chest.

Being your mama is the greatest honor of my life.

Please don’t forget that.  Ever.

I love you always and forever, to the moon and back, infinity, shmininity, and with a cherry on top.

“It [is] the pleasure of my life, and I [cherish] every time, and my whole world, it begins and ends with you.”  – Zac Brown Band

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