Being a mommy is absolutely the most wonderful gift I could have ever been given. I’ve never felt so confident in any job or position as I do in being a mother. Staring at my beautiful daughter and watching her grow and change every day makes even the most mundane exciting!
Last night, we got out of the house (WOOHOO!) to go hang out with our church family—it was good to get out of the house and have some much needed social time. When we got home, Lilian was exhausted but it was time for her to have her last bottle of the night so I gently woke her up, propped her on my leg and fed her. A few seconds later, her face began to contort in a way I didn’t know was possible…the ground slowly began to shake…her legs began to tremble…then…BOOM! It had happened. Instantly, my chest felt warm and slowly, a smell unlike anything I had smelled before began to fill the air. Kyle was warming up dinner in the kitchen until the vapors made their way through the door way and immediately, he knew his services were needed. He dropped his dinner (which is a sure sign of alarm) and followed me as I held my now wide-awake, screaming daughter who was covered in poop a foot away from my body in hopes to avoid any, um, unnecessary encounter. There was no way to clean her without a bath so Kyle warmed the water while I did damage control. A few minutes later, my traumatized daughter (and husband) emerged clean and alive. Barely.
Thankfully, she managed to fall asleep without too much drama and soon enough, I was getting ready for bed myself. Clothes changed, face washed, teeth brushed, I hobbled carefully to bed…until I felt something stuck under my fingernail, presumably a hangnail. I made it to the light to find that no, this was not a hangnail, nor was it a piece dirt or some unknown grime. It was yellow. small. round. Looked like a mustard seed. Unfortunately, I had seen this tiny bead before…in my daughter’s poop. All you parents know that newborn poop is yellow and looks like a jar of dijon was poured into a wet nap and yes, contains dozens of tiny ball-like things, one of which was now jammed far under my finger nail. I stared at if for a minute, as if touching it would bring on another explosion or worse, it would multiply into thousands of tiny little mustard poop balls. Shaking myself out of it, I found my fingernail file and dug it out and plopped it on a piece of toilet paper. Where poop belongs.
Now free of poop (at least any outward signs of it), I crawled into bed and as I began to drift off to sleep, Papa began to speak to my heart.
“See, Mallory, even with faith as small as a mustard seed, you can speak to the mountain and it will move.”
Oddly enough, it wasn’t the size of the seed that I kept thinking about but where it was found. In poop.
How true this is in life….or at least my life, for sure. So often I’m in the middle of something seemingly traumatic or devastating and there it is–a tiny little mustard seed carefully placed in my path so that I know that in the midst of struggle, there is a God who wants to bring revelation, faith and life. Those little seeds are easily missed, due to emotions being high-strung or misplaced focus. But what if instead of allowing ourselves to focus on all the, um, poop, we focused in on that little seed, created and purposed to bring forth LIFE. Focusing on that little seed will reposition us in a place of faith instead of being influenced by defeatism.
To all you non-parentals, you might think I’m crazy to have gotten all this from an explosive diaper but moms, I know you get it. So, go ahead, dig around in some poop…you might be surprised at what you find!
1 comment
Love this! It’s so easy to miss the lessons God has for us. Thanks for slowing down to listen to God and then sharing it with the world. I needed t hear it today!