when motherhood makes you cry

“Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.”
-Psalm 126:5-6

Last night the baseball all-star game was on tv, so we let the kids stay up a little later than usual.

Boy 2, however, was a little bored watching a no-hit baseball game on tv (shocking, I know), so he and I headed to his room so I could tuck him in.

I sat on his bed, rubbed his back, and started telling him stories from when he was a baby.

Like how I used to put him to bed.

Boy 2 was the first of my babies to be allowed (or forced, depending on your viewpoint) to cry himself to sleep. With Boy 1 I tried all kinds of methods and tricks that didn’t work, so I just rocked him to sleep until he was thirteen months old.

That’s when Boy 2 was born and Mr. Fantastic was put in charge of Boy 1 at bedtime. He let him cry it out for forty-five minutes one night and then the kid went to bed like a champ after that.

Apparently, either Daddy knows best or you have to be heartless to be a successful parent. One of those is definitely true in this case.

After my husband’s amazing success, I was determined not to let Boy 2 manipulate me at bedtime. Crying was no longer off-limits.

We established a routine. Every night I gave him his bath, put his lotion on, jammified the little guy, and rocked him while I sang a song. Then, into the crib he went.

After a few minutes he cried. So I peeked in the door, and then sat down in the hallway. I fretted. I cried with him. I was in anguish. A minute of his sobbing felt like an hour of torturous agony.

And then I decided that the only way for me to be okay while he suffered like this would be for me to suffer with him. I blame this conclusion on the way motherhood turns you insane and irrational after all those contractions make you a glutton for punishment and give you a nicely developed martyr complex.

In the darkness of the nursery, I would crawl in next to the crib, and lay on the floor until he cried himself to sleep. He never saw me or heard me because he was loudly screaming his guts out with his eyes shut.

After a few dozen nights spent in this fashion, Boy 2 learned to go to bed like a champ, just like his big brother.

I told Boy 2 all of this while I sat on his bed last night.

And then I told him that God loves him even more than a crazy woman who lays on the floor begging for sleep to come to her baby.

I said that when we suffer He is with us, aching for us, and loving us. When necessary, He lies down in the darkness and just waits for us to develop the necessary skills to overcome our natural inclination to scream it out.

Sitting there on his bed last night, my thoughts lingered on the hard moments of motherhood. The memory of the struggles caused me to relish all the more the uniqueness of this moment we shared as mother and son, with our hearts quieted by a love that seems boundless and very alive with destiny.

I whispered in his ear, “You are my son of grace, Jack. You are a gift to this family, and God has great plans for you.”

Faintly in my heart I could hear God telling me the very same thing….