Because of Abigail

I still remember the feelings I was experiencing when I started this blog. I tried so hard to come up with a title that was all me and no Abigail. I was almost a year into this motherhood thing and was grasping to get my stride and to feel something of who I was before Abigail. I was somewhat miserable, wallowing in the changes of motherhood and feelings of being lost. And I blamed Abigail for a large part of my misery. I don't know how it affected my mothering, but I am sure it did.

Lately I've begun feeling the same stirrings. Feeling like everything is changing and I am losing whoever I had become. And I had become, and I was comfortable, and I knew what I was doing (or could at least fake it.) As my shape shifts and my hormones dance about in abandon, I am left feeling out of place. As Christmas inches closer, I long for the fun of the season, the expectation, the quiet of knowing He who came.

But it eludes me. Hidden in the nativity strewn about the living room floor instead of placed neatly somewhere. Crushed by the dried beans that seem to find their way into every room. Smothered by the questions of what we have packed away for baby and what we need to have ready come April. And somewhere, regardless of how irrational, I blame the people I love most. I blame Chris. I blame Abigail. I blame the baby I refer to as Goliath. Knowing full well that God is working on something in me, and in them, at this moment, I hold up the process. I blame and I don't become. I harden the heart God wants to soften. I become inflexible. I become the discord I blame my family for.

So this week coming, instead of wallowing in being lost, I want to laugh and learn and bend and grow and revel in being lost . . .because of abigail.