We left the house for the first time in days this morning. I was nearly giddy with delight as I drove my big kids to school and then headed to the gym to run my little ones like wild before nap time. (Anyone else subscribe to the just get them as tired as possible routine as the most effective antidote to cabin fever?) The first official blizzard of 2011 had left us hedged in since Tuesday evening, and though the first twelve-hours felt cozy and fun, our happy medley of board games and living room talent shows eventually spiraled into caged-animal chaos. A blizzard isn’t so bad, but a winter storm that follows a three-day family flu-fest is an Olympic-sized test of endurance (at least for the mommy who’s been holding puke buckets and mopping sweaty foreheads for thirty-six-hours straight!)
Thankfully, the sun escaped the cloud cover today and the outdoor thermostat rose steadily. The school doors were unlocked and our flu buckets were deep cleaned and banished once again to the laundry room. The knee-high drifts of snow that had blocked our front door were shoveled into large white mountains along the driveway, while the Little People houses that had turned my living room into a messy plastic ghetto were relocated to the toy closet. The hedge had toppled (at least until the next blizzard blows through).
I can manage the icy white walls that come with my simple Midwest life. I know that a steady dose of spring sunshine will eventually melt winter’s barrier. However, the hedges that accompany this season of motherhood are more difficult to embrace. When I first became a mommy I was shocked by my unexpected feeling of stuck–ness. When I’d welcomed my first smashed-nosed, bald-headed beauty into the world on August 17, 1998, I hadn’t imagined the hedges that one small seven-pound-seven-ounce being would erect around my comfortable life. Just as my firstborn’s budding independence began to mow down a hedge or two, I added another hedge-builder to the mix. And then another, and another, and still one more. For over a dozen years, I’ve been bound by nap times and hungry tummies, diaper bags and car seats, early risers and nighttime wailers.
Before we had kids, Rob and I spent a year teaching at an international school in the heart of Europe. We hiked mountains and biked along the Rhine. We took weekend trips to Venice and lived on a steady diet of gelato and cappuccino. We slept in and stayed up late and lingered over warm apple strudel at sidewalk cafes. These days, the only thing in my life that lingers regularly is the stench of dirty diapers. The only trains I’m hopping are the ones made out of couch cushions and bedroom pillows. Some days, my most adventurous hike is a trudge around the yard looking for a lost mitten in the snow. I do still love coffee, but I don’t sip it midday beneath a colorful striped umbrella anymore. On most days, I down my first cup before the sun rises while I snuggle with a pajama-clad toddler.
In her book,Mama’s Got A Fake I.D., Caryn Dahlstrand Rivandenaria writes, “Let’s face it: we face limitations that non–moms don’t have to contend with. Because young lives depend on us for love, nurture, and their very survival, sooner or later we’re going to hit a wall. Or a hedge… one that God has put there for His purposes. That hedge may keep us from living out our identities in all areas at all times. I can honestly say that even on my best days as a mom– where we’re all having fun, when the kids aren’t fighting or whining, and I don’t feel like I’m messing up anyone’s life too much– I find myself brushing up against this hedge, kind of wistfully peering over what’s hemming me in. On bad days, I confess, I feel like mowing right through it.”
Like this honest mother of three, when I begin to “count the cost” of a dozen years of motherhood, the incessant demands of my ordinary life can quickly feel like stone walls keeping me from the extraordinary world I was meant to inhabit. But when I consider the words offered to Rivandeneria by a wise named Rosalie, I inherit a new lens for looking at the hedges of motherhood. Rosalie suggests: “I feel God hems us in at times for his own purposes. He uses our children and their needs to hem us in; he uses our husband’s conflicting schedules; he uses job application and rejection. I just pray that I fulfill what it is he wants me to do within the hedge he has erected…”
Could it be that God has hemmed us into our small worlds of diapers and dishes and toddler tantrums and teddy bears for such a time as this? Could our mommy hedges be part of His plan for growing us into the women He has created us to be? Could our fortresses of nap times and laundry piles, potty-training and carpooling be God’s wise way of holding us in a place that He knows we might have chosen to pass through too quickly- or maybe not at all if it weren’t for those formidable walls. Really, would I have chosen to live withinthe hedge of self-sacrifice and humility, of exhaustion and complete reliance on the Lord if I hadn’t been stuck in the diaper pail for the past twelve years?
Lately, I’ve been asking the Lord to help me rejoice in my hedges. After all, I won’t be hemmed in forever. And, when I think about it, I’ve got some pretty amazing company right here in the diaper pail. Immanuel, God is with us!
The Overflow:You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. -Psalm 139:5-6
