By Emily Ades
A little over sixteen months ago, I began the journey of motherhood, a journey which, to date, has been one of the most beautiful and yet one of the most challenging things I have encountered. Unlike anything I have experienced, the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual converged in such a way that the sacred and the struggle have been sustained in all their fullness. As I reflect on my experience as a mom thus far, the image which comes to mind is that of a tapestry. I say this because much of my journey as a first-time mom has involved traversing unfamiliar terrain where there has been more confusion than clarity, more doubt than certainty, and more questions than answers. Like an unfinished tapestry whose strands look like a colourful mess rather than a beautiful, recognizable image, my life has felt overwhelming and muddled, something which has produced a very real sense of anxiety and loneliness. Feeling out of control and unseen, I find myself asking, “Who else understands how I feel? Other moms seem to have things together in a way I never have. What am I doing wrong that they seem to be doing right?”
These doubts and questions have often thrust me into an anxious spiral, one which has blinded me to the beauty of my becoming as a mom; that is, the beauty of the ongoing transformation in myself and in my relationships. The tapestry has felt threatening instead of delightful because its incompleteness demands that I accept an uncomfortable tension; namely that motherhood is an invitation to bathe in an ocean of disparate emotions. Anxiety and joy, exhaustion and aliveness, lostness and calling. These things all coexist and are woven together like different coloured and textured strands of a tapestry. Each one belongs. Each one has a place. Each one serves a purpose.
The unknown looms large, and motherhood demands much from me; yet I am slowly learning that I need not allow these things to blind me to its beauty. For, motherhood is a gracious gift from God whereby I am invited daily to taste the goodness of the Father, to participate in the self-sacrificial love of Jesus, and to know more deeply the gentle companionship of the Holy Spirit.
And so, I ask it of you: Where is the unfinished tapestry in your life, the liminal spaces where you feel the weight of lack? Whatever it is, I urge you not to shy away from the anxiety of incompleteness but to notice how there, in the midst of the messiness, God is ever-present and wholly good.
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