COMMENTARY: What I Didn’t Know About Motherhood

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Giving birth was the easy part. I didn’t know it at the time, of course. Once the hours of contractions and pain had passed and that crying baby was placed in my arms, I breathed a sigh of relief and said a prayer of gratitude. Then came the sleepless […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Giving birth was the easy part.

I didn’t know it at the time, of course. Once the hours of contractions and pain had passed and that crying baby was placed in my arms, I breathed a sigh of relief and said a prayer of gratitude.


Then came the sleepless nights, the spilled milk, the skinned knees and the suspicious friends. I struggled through adolescence and second-guessed teenage boundaries.

Little did I know that the hardest part would come 18 years later when that baby had grown into a man and my job was to push him out into the world one last time.

Admittedly, it is into the somewhat protected world of college, but I know now that this is the beginning of his new life. I have done this once before, with my older son, and I know now that it will never be the same again. My job is coming to an end.

Motherhood, it turns out, is a conflicted calling. We are told that our job is to protect, defend, instruct and encourage. We try diligently, often fail miserably, and work tirelessly at getting it right.

Just when we are getting the hang of it, the job is over. Every protective instinct we have developed must be suppressed. Every desire to nurture must be ignored. We must push that child into adulthood as if we hadn’t loved every last minute of being needed.

We encourage confidence even as we fear the unknowns. We affirm risk-taking while praying for safety. We preach courage while hiding our tears.

Even as we are being left behind, we steadfastly affirm that it was always meant to be this way.

I am comforted by the fact that I will always be a mother and perhaps, someday, a grandmother. I am reminded of all the good times and even the bad that have somehow blended into a childhood my son pronounces “happy.”


But I am, to be honest, a bit angry at God. The children he gave me came with no instructions and no disclaimers. I did my bumbling best, making mistakes too often and feeling confident only rarely. I called out often for divine guidance but never felt total faith in this role.

It seemed that I was always surrounded by mothers who had a much better idea of the job description and were far more prepared for the unexpected. I didn’t know the acceptable margin of error in mothering. How many mistakes does it take to add up to a dysfunctional childhood?

Only now does it seem obvious. I can look back at all the times I punished out of anger and rewarded out of guilt and know for certain that it didn’t really matter. I was a less-than-perfect mother doing a job no one gets exactly right.

My imperfect love had its ragged edges softened by grace. It was never as much about me as I feared. And now it is less about me than I hoped.

I was not prepared to be a mother and now I am not prepared to let go. God knew this from the beginning but kept it from me. He let me stumble through the years of mothering, watching me hold that little hand, all the while knowing that at some point I would be called upon to open my hand and release my grip.

In this ultimate act of mothering, I will pray for the grace and courage to declare that this is the way it was always supposed to be. I will send my youngest son out into the world knowing that if I have done my job well, he won’t look back.


KRE/JL END BOURKE

(Dale Hanson Bourke is the mother of two sons and the author of “Second Calling.”)

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