There was this image that I had of motherhood.

Delicate sunlight cascading down through a window, casting soft shadows across the bedroom. The bed is a brilliant white; adorned in a plush down comforter and feather filled pillows. I lay on my stomach, perched up on my elbows, staring down at my infant son. He is all smiles as he gazes back up into my eyes. I take in his freshly bathed scent of lavender soap and oatmeal lotion as he happily babbles to me about his day.

Of course, this was before I actually became a mother, and realized that parents never buy white bedding sets. For oh so many reasons.

It’s not that I romanticized the idea of motherhood. I knew there would be dirty diapers and spit up and skinned knees and sleepless nights.

But there is so much of motherhood that cannot be understood until you are in the thick of it. 

There are so many surprises.

In her book Surprised By Motherhood, author Lisa-Jo Baker writes about “Everything I never expected about being a mom.”

I think that many of us arrive at the threshold of motherhood with a whole lot of expectations. And yet, I’ve come to discover in my short almost-five-years of experience, that the beauty of motherhood often lurks in the most unassuming places.

First, I never expected to find the beauty of motherhood among the messy imperfections.

For instance, that soft downy comforter, lavender soap, and freshly bathed baby that I used to imagine? Reality looks a lot more like me curled up on a couch that’s covered in Cheerio dust, napping next to my infant boy in his footie pajamas he’s been wearing for two days; his nose all chapped and runny from days of fighting a cold.

And you know what?

It is lovely, this true image of the breathtaking mess that motherhood actually is. Just how magnificent it is in all of its raw, unfiltered, rough-edged truth.

Even on my family’s best days, when we’re up in the mountains, tossing rocks in the river, and watching a herd of elk grazing in a nearby meadow—someone is bound to be whining about something. Or we run out of snacks (which is a very, very big deal with 3 boys…) Or someone is cold. We can surround ourselves with the most perfect setting, and still “perfect” eludes us every time.

Motherhood has a beautiful way of teaching us that “It is what it is”, so we had better enjoy it to the fullest for what it is! That is where beauty unfolds.

Secondly, I never expected to find the beauty of motherhood in the mundane nature of our day-to-day.

Among the piles of dirty dishes and laundry, in the pool of spilled juice, in the splatters of water paint and the rainbow orbs of bubbles dancing through the backyard–this day-to-day humdrum is where I stumbled upon the extraordinary.

Lisa-Jo calls it the “Sacred marriage of the mundane and the eternal.” She says it is, “The small directly related to the massive; kids walking around like so much eternity with skin on.”

And it’s in words like these that I see it– the magnificent beauty of spreading peanut butter on bread, teaching the difference between consonants and vowels, scrubbing out sippy cups, and stopping to answer one million and one questions throughout our day.

These little things, they are huge. They matter. I never could have imagined just how much.

Lastly, I never expected to find the beauty of motherhood in how ridiculously hard it is.

As Lisa-Jo puts it in her book, “Mothers may want to find room to breathe, to weep, to panic. But they don’t want it to end—this delivering, shaping, cheering, loving, bringing life into the world.”

After a long day of motherhood, this “room to breathe” is exactly what I long for. I often find it in bubble bath at the end of the night. The other night was no different—except that the baby was crying from his crib in the next room over.

I crept through his door, and lifted him out of the crib and into my arms. I took off his pajamas, unstrapped his diaper, and plopped him down into my bubble bath. And there we sat together, playing in mountains of white bubbles, lavender wafting through the air, French music playing softly, him looking up at me to smile every few moments.

After another long day of navigating my little people through life, I just wanted some rest. Some quite. Some alone. But him there, all joy with bubbles dancing atop his blonde curls, was the reminder I needed of why all the hard is worth every single moment. Every single tear. Every single exhausted morning. It’s worth every hard thing.

Motherhood reveals the very worst of me. And that, I believe, is what is also unearthing the very best in me. Sometimes it takes coming face to face with your deepest fears, your shocking selfishness, and who you are at your very weakest in order to discover where true beauty finds space to grow.

I asked on Facebook this week, “What has surprised you most about motherhood?” I loved Gretchen’s answer. She said, “It’s a daily dose of the Gospel. How God uses it to refine me. How the trials that he brings me through with my kids are as much a learning process for me and my own sinfulness and need for a Heavenly Father to guide, protect and love me. Every time I lecture my kids, God’s tapping my shoulder and saying… ‘Sound familiar?’”

Surprising beauty, right there.

The truth is, this job is very, very, very hard.

It is demanding and exhausting and confusing and incredibly emotional.

But that is exactly where the beauty is found. In the hard stuff. And in the big grace that makes the hard stuff into the holy stuff.

To all the Mamas out there taking joy in the imperfect mess, loving hard in the middle of the mundane, and learning who they are in the very hard stuff—this is exactly where the beauty of motherhood is found. So never stop looking for it.

You can purchase Surprised By Motherhood here 

 

{Note:  I am not receiving any compensation for this endorsement. I have greatly benefited from Lisa-Jo Baker’s book, and believe that many others can also.}