You know that feeling when your first baby is born and the nurses and doctors tell you it’s time to head home and you look at your tiny human in disbelief thinking, “Are you sure? I have no idea what I am doing!”, but then you suck it up and do it anyway? Even in the heaviness, even in the unknown, even in the challenge, even in the uncertainty, even in the exhaustion? That feeling right there, that is the one that follows me around, poking at me from time to time, reminding me, this is how it will be, but nevertheless, you got this.

You fumble through the hard days and feel like you could fly on the good days. As they get older they become more independent, each day they can do something new. You see that they are making strides and gaining new skills and you start to see little glimpses of what their life would look like when they don’t need your help and support for every part of their day. You see little encouraging moments that they will do just fine without you, that they will live their own life independent of you…except maybe they won’t.

Maybe what will actually happen is you will have an incredibly perfect baby girl, the medical staff still sends you home even though you have no idea what you are doing. You make it through the hard days and you soar through the good days. You live life, raise your tiny being and yet you notice that something is incredibly different. Your amazing child makes moves and puts forth the greatest effort to be independent, to do things for herself, and try as she may she can’t. Her tenacity and resolve never wavers, but her body fails her, time and time again.

You see her develop a new skill and make that move toward independence and then within months, weeks, or even days, that skill is no longer. You hope and wish, and you pray with all you have that it may all come back, with full force and dare I say, even greater accuracy than before, but it doesn’t. As each day goes by instead of seeing your child move closer and closer to independence she moves closer and closer to you. Relying on you for everything as she continues to grow but is unable to be her own support. She can’t do it alone and she looks to you because from the very beginning you were there and you will try, with everything, to always be there.

You see the weight of this life, those feelings of inadequacy and uncertainty, they never stay behind in that postpartum room, left behind neatly folded at the foot of the bed for someone to come and take them away for you. With this life there aren’t days when the skills of getting dressed on their own, making their own lunch, or of getting themselves out the door on time are there to offer the encouragement that they will be able to make it without your help. In this life, that simply does not exist—at least not for us. That feeling right there, spurns on the irrational thought of needing to live forever (or heartbreakingly outlive her) so you can be there for her always. That feeling never leaves you. Ever.

So now what? Now that we know what is required of us, what do we do with that? We live our life, we live out every beautiful moment to the fullest and we draw on every ounce of hope and faith we can muster during the hard days. We move our bodies with intentionality, every day to stay strong. We fill our life with amazing, wonderful, generously loving people that cherish our girl and step in when we ask, and even when we don’t, just to help carry our load for a bit.

We pray for strength and grace, wisdom in abundance, and trust that we are loving her well and helping her become all that we know she is called to do and be on the earth. We do our absolute best each and every day, even when we feel like failures, and know that help will always be there when she needs it, in some form and in some way. This much we know to be true and knowing this is what keeps us going, it is what keeps us looking up.

The Weight of it All