My mommy heart

Let's just get straight to it...my mommy heart is hurting these days. 

They say that being a mother changes you.  It does.  You grow an extra heart - a mommy heart.  I'm convinced that they take the best parts of your brain to build this new heart...But I digress.  This mommy heart has been my biggest asset and my largest problem in the past few months.  It's one of those necessary organs that cannot be removed, but it is also a problem organ in that it often needs you to pay attention to it.  Much like your original heart. 

I have a beautiful, joyful, strong, fun, funny, strong-willed forgiving, curious, loud, emotional, feeler of a 2 1/2 year old.  She is cut from the same cloth as her mama on so many things.  Her daddy in her is that she is sensitive to too much noise and stimulation (unless it's her) and she desperately needs time alone (though this has developed in me too.)  She talks all the time and moves constantly when she is awake.  She can't sit still to eat.  Though there are times when she is so focused on setting up her Little People dinner party or making perfect sandwiches that she can be so focused that she doesn't move or hear you when you speak to her.  Her emotions are  high these days.  She throws herself on the floor at most "no's" and wails (literally).  And then in the next moments, she can't get enough hugs and kisses when we leave for work or she is going to sleep.  She wants to be held again a lot.  She can be so kind and so unkind all in a minutes time. 

And that part of the brain that was taken to make my mommy heart...It's desperately needed.  So the feeler in me now FEELS with my mommy heart and has a hard time thinking about my next good spiritual parent move.  I want to take her to Jesus...I want her to see Him in me.  But my mommy heart hurts and I tend to get angry out of my sadness.  So my mommy heart is angry and sad.  And then there is NO clear THINKING. 

Oh how I need Jesus...Oh how I need His Spirit. 

My FEELER takes over my mommy heart and now we have two completely desperate for Jesus FEELERS.  BAD combo, y'all. 

I've never understood my need to abide more than now.  And I'm not abiding.  I'm panicking a lot.  I'm losing my cool and my mind - more than what was initially gone.  I'm lost in my emotion and my THOUGHT of bringing her to Jesus and Jesus saving me from myself...  Oh, y'all, it's just not pretty.

Gary Thomas reminds us in Sacred Parenting that maybe parenting is more about us than about the kid.  Maybe it's an avenue of holiness for us, too.  Just like marriage changes us and makes us dig deep and listen more, so does parenting.  This stuff is not for the faint of heart. 

I'm a mess these days.  My mommy heart needs some tending.  It needs Spirit to come in and make it beautiful.  It's this new organ than I'm really not sure of all of it's needs and triggers.

 I'm so thankful for it though.

My mommy heart let's me see my Love Bug's beauty and strengths.  I know she will change the world.  It lets me pray like only a mommy heart can for the salvation of her heart and her deep understanding of her Savior.  It lets me see her humor and laugh with her about the silliest of things.  It is part of what brings new mercies every day.  It's a very forgiving organ.  No matter how hard the day  was before and how awful you feed it, when your body wakes up the next morning, it's working perfectly.   It's a lot of work to think about this whole new organ.  But I am so thankful...It has brought me a deeper empathy for mom's everywhere.  Sometimes a debilitating empathy...but I have never loved other moms so much in my life.

So we will run to Jesus today.  I will run there and try to take my Love Bug with me.  My mommy heart is SO excited to spend this day with her and Little One.