thank you, Charissa

I was talking with a friend the other day about the changes in my life in the past year and how God has drawn closer to me than I have ever experienced... and more sentences than not began with the words, "Since Charissa was born..."

They say motherhood changes you. Before you have a child, I think you take that to mean in the external application of life... you change the way you live, you have less time for yourself, you can't be as selfish as you are by nature, you have to think and plan differently... all true in and of themselves, but in essence they have nothing to do with how motherhood changes you.

And I have grappled with it, loved it, wept over it, and praised my LORD for it... the substance of who you are changes, and it is a wonderful thing.

Was reading a short chapter about this in a book on motherhood that puts this better than I ever could, from the perspective of telling a friend how she will be changed by having a baby:
"I want to tell her that the physical wounds of childbearing heal, but that becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw that she will be forever vulnerable. I consider warning her that she will never read a newspaper again without asking, 'What if that had been my child?' That ever plane crash, every fire will haunt her. That when she sees pictures of starving children, she will look at the mothers and wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die...
I want to assure her that eventually she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same way about herself. That her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a child. That she will give it up in a moment to save her offspring, but will also begin to hope for more years, not so much to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish [hers]...
My friend's relationship with her husband will change, I know; but not in the ways she thinks. I wish she could understand how much more you can love a man who is careful to always powder the baby or who never hesitates to play with his child. I think she should know that she will fall in love with her husband again for reasons she would now find very unromantic... I want to describe to my friend the exhilaration of seeing your son learn to hit a baseball. I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog [or a cat, as was the case with Charissa the other night] for the first time...
I want her to taste the joy that is so real that it hurts"

Thank you, Charissa, for changing not just my life, but who I am in ways I never knew could happen and certainly never intended. Thank you for blazing into my world and shining the light of God's grace into this soul.

Thank you, Charissa, for making me a mother.