You Changed Me

Before there was you, there was hot coffee and uninterrupted lunch dates. There was time to clean the house and put on make-up - do homework, go to work. I could stay up late, sleep til noon, leave without telling anyone - whenever I wanted to. I was basically a rockstar.

And now I speak of the lines, the stretchmarks that are etched deep, hard into my skin that read of a time before we began. I now can run on very little sleep, make it through a day with no solid meals and find a way to bounce, sway, rock back and forth - sitting down, standing up to help you fall asleep. I am able to just look at you and know you're sick, you're tired, you're hungry - calling for me to nurse life into you. Liquid gold, my body now makes that. We're talking superhuman trumps the rockstar.

I've been broken down, made wide, pulled thin all at the same time. I've cracked and bled; processing pain I've never known, riding a depthless ocean of hormones that bind me closer to you through the tears, the laughter, the explosive kind of love I knew when your heart beat next to mine - skin on skin - for the first time.

You changed me.

I gave birth to you, but you also gave birth to me as a mother, and now we are bound up in this lifelong story of growing together. And all that stuff that happened before there was you - before there was us - pales in comparison to the adventure we now know.

I love how God chose me for this; how He chose you for me and me for you. All to draw us deeper into communion with Him, His plan, eternity. We are here to sharpen and refine one another in our domestic church, our mission for sainthood. And somehow that makes the cold coffee and early wake-up calls golden because they have purpose - they drive us deeper into the mystery of life given for life; a holy, maternal sacrifice. And it is all so alluring, addicting - like we are tasting a sliver of the love God pours out for all of His children.

You changed me.
He changed us.
And it is good.