My baby is about to have a baby.
20 years ago, on THIS VERY DAY I went into labor for a little dark-haired beauty to dress in pink.  I was twenty years old.  It was my second child.  My first girl.  And I was terrified and awed.  Terrified because I didn’t have a clue what a good mother-daughter relationship should look like and felt incapable of dreaming it up let alone facilitating one.
Yet, here I am with two girls now (and of course my amazing son as well) who like to spend time with me and we laugh and play and sing together.
This is further proof of my God Who loves me–this beauty from ashes.
Any day now, my precious dark-haired beauty will be thrown headlong into the joyous pain that is motherhood.  And isn’t it though, mothers?  It is indeed a joyous pain.
Motherhood is a tightrope walk of sorts between ultimate fulfillment and devastating helplessness.  And though it feels sometimes like it is about you, it is most definitely not.  It can’t be if you’re to be any kind of good mother.
SelfLESS.  It is one powerful, complicated word.
You want for them to be happy.  You want for them to do better than you did. You want for them to know joy and love.
You want, you want…but really it can’t be about that.
Regardless of what we want, we are simply vessels through which our children travel.  These precious lives are not a redo of ours, and they are not ours to claim.  To treat them as such is so unfair and robs them of their potential to be even better, even more than we are able to be.  It holds them back from writing their own story.
I feel this deep in my gut right now.  As I try to imagine what it will feel like to watch my daughter labor.  I imagine a tiny piece will tear from my heart, and then be mended as I watch her joy.  As I try to be available to her without crossing any lines and being too close.  As I let her be the mother and take a step back into Grandmother-land and let her define how she would like that to look.
This is HER baby, after all.  Her chance to make a mother-mark on the world.  I had my chance three times, and now is where the rubber meets the road.  Watching to see if the lessons I taught, and by the grace of God tried to live out, will bloom in ways that I recognize–but can’t lay claim to.
Thankfully, my three know upon Whom they rely.  Though the path may be stony, they will have a hand to hold.  And it’s not mine.  I’m just support staff at this point–loving, on-call support staff.
There is a primal satisfaction that only a mother can know.
Perhaps only the mother of a daughter–someday I will test this theory.
Perhaps it is a woman who comes from what is broken and then experiences what is good with her own daughter.
I don’t know.  But from whatever aspect it comes, I know how I feel at this moment in my life.   I have a deep sense of completion as I’ve never known before.  My baby is having a baby and wants me near.  It has come full circle.  It contains several miracles, this circle.
I am marking this moment.