two rachels

My story really started the day I was born, but for your sake, I will start with a few years ago.  You're welcome.  I was twenty seven when I became a mom.  I thought I was pretty well acquainted with myself.  In my own frenzied ducks-in-a-row way I figured that I had lived enough life, worked enough of my kinks out that my kids wouldn't be irreparably scarred , and had had "enough fun" to settle down and build a family.    I just decided that the door to anything pre-kids would be shut, locked, and that key would be tossed.  I mean, I was almost thirty. Seriously.  That's so old.

And, at the beginning, during the late night feedings and the body change and the hour that it took me to pack a diaper bag just to go to Target I really really really decided that I was right.  I would look at married couples without kids, I would look at PK's (Pre-kidders) at the beach in their bikinis and I would mourn this part of my life that passed.  I seriously must have freaked out the high school girls that I met with, as I would go on verbal rampages about how lucky they were to have french fries for lunch in the cafeteria, and how I would give my left eyeball to sleep in until noon.  I figured I  might as well put on the denim jumper, get the mom haircut, and let my three month old finger paint the walls.  If you stuck a fork in my flabby post-baby arm, you would have known.  I was done.  I felt done.

  Don't get me wrong.  I LOVED (as I still do) being a new mom. I drank in every moment as a stay at home mom, stealing sweet kisses from my baby whenever I could.  I think I cried every night as I rocked Madeline and prayed over her life.  It was a feeling like no other.  I loved the rhythm of life.  I cherished the play dates, the coffee runs, the lazy days at the park and at the beach.  It was so beautiful.  Yet I began to feel a little unsettled.  My pre-mom Rachel was knocking on my hearts door.  She wanted to play.

As I sought God out, I began to realize that my perspective had been pretty skewed.  I fully believed that I had to lay down who God made me to be in order to embrace the kind of mom He wanted me to be. I was ready to do it.  But, slowly and brilliantly, God unraveled this untruth in me.  He allowed me to see that He had created me on purpose.  And that those dreams, passions, and yearnings were from Him, and would be accomplished thru Him.  And that my family was part of that equation of becoming whole.  That everything I'd gleaned from marriage and motherhood was being added unto me, and it was all put back into a better version of myself. There were not two Rachels.  There was just one kind of confused one.  Rachel 2.0.

And some time passed.  I slept more.  Some stretch marks faded (note: the some.  Hey.  I'll take it).  And I began to realize that I was still myself.  Just a little older, wiser, and slightly chubbier.  My passions did not fade.  My convictions and career aspirations were not under lock and key.  And, although I did have a moment of insanity where I bought fleece-lined Crocs, my fashion senses were somewhat in tact.  Most of all, as these two perspectives merged, I felt a beautiful peace taking over.

Although being a mother of Godly proportions requires much sacrifice and teaches much wisdom, patience, and perseverance, I now know that it does not requires death to self.  It requires just the opposite.  Being much alive in the One who holds everything together, and reconciles the old with the new.  Now I can bravely face whatever my God has set before me because I get it.  I may or may not have to go back to this blog and eat my own words a few times, but I'm grasping it.  Stay tuned world:  Rachel 3.0 in the making:)