I didn’t know how being a mama would change me. When I quit the work at the office and wondered if I’d miss all the grown-ups, I didn’t know how much I’d really be okay. I’d be just fine teaching a little boy his letters and how to make friends and a little girl how to nurture life and run fast and wild and free.

My email box got a lot thinner, after the walls of my belly grew out and people weren’t writing, needing me to do all these “important” things, but somehow I found all this delight in scrubbing mac-n-cheese off plastic Thomas the train plates and changing little people’s britches for the umpteenth time.

I really, really like being a mama.

I like the part where you cuddle up next to the little boy who grew big inside of you and gave you your first stretch marks, and continues to stretch your thinking with his questions like, “Does God ever get hungry? Or what about sleep? Does He sleep?”

And I love the part where you push your little girl on the swing even though you’d rather be reading a book or weeding the garden and while you’re doing it, you catch a glimpse of all that radiant light in her eyes and the way her silky sun-streaked hair whooshes back and forth and you remember again what it was like to be a little girl.

I didn’t know how being a mama would make me care more about all the other little girls and boys in the world–would make me see them through a mama’s eyes–as if I’ve got this responsibility to help and protect them, too. I didn’t know how my heart would ache for the world when everyone else was fast asleep and how I’d pray while the moon gleamed and the crickets chirped, for God to push back the darkness and that His Kingdom would come here to this fallen, messed up world, just like it is in Heaven. I’d prayed these prayers before, but I’ve got this new fervency now. Because my little babes are growing up on this spinning earth and I want them to love their life and enjoy what’s good.

I didn’t know how much I’d cry. All these happy tears. And how God would use their faith and their purity to  encourage me, and how He’d show me anew through such little people’s eyes, how to view the world, with all this wonder. Observing a caterpillar on a leaf. Stirring mud with a stick. Throwing rocks in a pond. Running for the shear fun of it.

And sometimes when I look in the mirror and see how this tummy has warped and these hips won’t ever fit back into my favorite jeans, I just remember this–I get to be a mama.

Thank You, Lord. I really, really like being a mama.