Receiving the Gift of Newborns

Pure gift… words I dared to utter about our new babe. We named him Nathanael, which means “gift of God” because, after all, after loss and waiting, it’s harder to take the gift for granted. The first time around, I was so overwhelmed by all the newness that it took awhile for the magnitude of the gift to really settle in. So, this time we are acutely aware of what has been given to us. 

Gifts can be funny though. Sometimes we receive gifts we don’t want or didn’t ask for. One year when I was teaching middle school religion, a family gifted every teacher with a bottle of wine except me. Their Christmas gift to me was a plate. I tried so hard to be grateful, but I wanted the wine! Other times we deeply want something and it turns out it wasn’t what we expected. Or perhaps we are longing for something but we seem to wait endlessly. 

Receiving New Life

Receiving the gift of new life isn’t a whole lot different. Sometimes we aren’t expecting it or we aren’t ready for it. Perhaps the timing doesn’t seem right, coming too soon or too late. Regardless of how or when it arrives, new life is always a great gift and blessing. But for something that is supposedly so beautiful, why does the beauty come bound up with great suffering?

Any new mother knows this. Babies come in this package of adorable, tiny bundles of perfection and cuteness. Right? People everywhere romanticize the idea of a baby. They’re sleepy and snuggly. Women everywhere (especially little church ladies) love to squeeze those chubby cheeks and long to rock them to sleep. There are constant declarations of people wishing they could “take him home” wrapped in reminders that time flies and “before you know it they’ll be graduating high school.” 

The Reality?

But none of these experiences speak to the reality we face with a newborn. It’s hard to hear these rosy, happy comments from people when the nights are sleepless and the breasts are sore from milk coming in and the heart is overwhelmed. The tears come and flow often, as if your heart were bursting because it simply can’t contain all that you are feeling. 

Yet, this moment, this child, these sufferings, they are a self-emptying, life-giving, undeniable gifts, they just happen to come in an unexpected way. The newborn days are difficult, but they are fleeting. With a sleep deprived wink of an eye, they are over. We quickly enter into days where the babies start to smile, to sleep longer stretches, hold their own head up. Yet these difficult days offer great gifts. They offer opportunities to grow and be stretched into something greater precisely because we are living out of our comfort zone for a tiny baby who is poor and helpless and completely dependent upon us. That is the raw, gritty beauty of welcoming new life.

It Gets Better!

If you are in the trenches of motherhood with a tiny babe and longing for sleep that lasts more than a few hours, the days will come. If you are longing for the discomforts to subside, I promise you, they will. Though the tiny package of a baby may not be exactly what you expected, it is so beautiful and will change you forever, refining and purifying you by fire.

The gift of motherhood is one that purifies me daily, giving me an opportunity to dive into a greater depth of holiness – though I constantly fall short and try to resist it. As the days continue to tick by, I grow in gratitude for the two little souls entrusted to my care and pray that I receive well the refining and purifying gifts they offer. 

Questions for Reflection

• What is a gift you have struggled to receive? Why?
• What is a gift that has involved suffering but also great beauty and growth?
• What is a gift you are longing to receive?
• Bring all these things to prayer. Talk to God about the desires on your heart. Let him speak to you. Write down what you hear him speaking to your heart.