The Good Friday of Motherhood

I’ve placed this baby in his bassinet 2 times and he wakes up every time, day after day, the so called struggle is real. I have dishes to do, floors to clean, laundry to dry after washing it twice because life happened and it was left in the machine, I feel defeated by the unsuccessful transfer to the bassinet but then…

slowing down to intentionally enjoy holding my baby while he is still a baby, so I won’t have to look back and think “I didn’t realize that was the last time I held my baby” and try to recreate a moment I wish I enjoyed every time it happened organically.

It occurs to me now that the most productive thing I will do today is hold my baby, even while he sleeps.

Share this with a mom who needs the freedom to be productive today. To release the pressure to accomplish and to embrace the joy of the productivity of nurture. Nurture that attaches. Nurture that releases. Nurture that heals.

Funny how turning the tables on a definition can suddenly turn motherhood into the best board room you’ll ever sit at the table of.

The only board room where no one will say you are too womanish because your tears streamed down the head of your top client baptizing them in your love.

Friends, there are some moments that birth US in motherhood, it took 3 times for me to get here, but Selah.

I’m resting in this.

Dishes are stacked from not just today but the whole week. I’m not here for the ones that have the picture perfect life but rather to change the NARRATIVE of the picture and release the pressure.

No filter.

The text I sent to my husband after snapping a photo of myself and realizing this is how I been walking around.

Because for every picture of a well put together wife, mom, house and home you see, I can promise you that there are a ton more of unfiltered moments lived out.

And here’s the thing, unfiltered is not always  as depressing as this photo might be illuding you into believing, because this for me…is JOY. The tears are healing even in the chaotic overwhelm. Because this is the only kind of overwhelming that calls me blessed with incessant cries of MOMMY MOMMY.

…and even when i want to escape the yoke of such an anointing and yell out in the word of my Mema “call me Pa!” I am reminded that Ma is all I was made for and she is enough. I have had the GREATEST laughter in the chaos. In moments of sending this selfie to my husband, not looking like a baddie but looking like his. The woman he sees all the angles of. And so be not mistaken that what looks like a photo of electrocution and what the world would call unkept and unattractive, it is the unfiltered that has filled our home and our marriage with electrocuting love.  So be free my sister, release yourself from the burden of the perfect and filtered beauty. My life is a hot mess and I’ve been spending so much time trying to work myself out of the mess that I almost missed the message (Yɛ frɛ no Baby Yaw) lying on my chest waiting to free me from work.

SELAH

It means pause and take a Rest, enjoy it, take it in it’s soooo good.

s.e.l.a.h., sister, s.e.la.h.

Because when my rib received the picture he laughed after we walked around for 30 minutes stressed and lips pressed together whether in pain or anguish…in the seeming stress and mess of our life…

And then the unfiltered, unmade up version of the woman he loves cracked him! - making his lips pour forth with a smile, wild and uncontrolled and full of laughter.

I S A A C

This is our Isaac year.

Divine laughter is our portion, even when life does not seem fun but heavy.

Here we are in the trenches, And there’s joy here.

This is the unfiltered bloody essence of Good Friday. This is Motherhood.

If motherhood were a glimpse of crucifixion I’d imagine it looks like this, heavy a cross to carry, but broken and bruised just to hold close the ones I cherish and love with an everlasting love.

See me broken and busted today, but the baddie will be back on Sunday and up to good trouble in Christ crushing the head of the serpent. I might be feeling the nails today but Ima get up …when Sunday comes…stay tuned, you might just think it’s a filter when you see the 3 day turn around.

But I assure you, nothing is filtered about Resurrection.

“Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

‭‭John‬ ‭2‬:‭19‬ ‭KJV‬‬

Selah.