According to the Encarta online dictionary, one definition of heart is:
The Basis of Emotional Life: the source and center of emotional life, where the deepest and sincerest feelings are located and a person is most vulnerable to pain
I want to give you a peek inside a mother's heart. Not the blood, tissue, cell, electricity, but the reason a mother's heart beats. It beats first like an eagle soaring to great heights. The news that a baby is on the way, whether a feeling, a store-bought "+" sign, a blood test, a doctor's notes, an agency's phone call. It's that knowledge that you are going to become a mother that immediately begins to change the heart. It palpitates, it flutters, it clenches, it expands, it screams, it sighs, it laughs, it cries. A mother's heart is born. And the transformation will leave the woman forever changed, no matter the outcome.
I spoke of soaring and I really mean soaring. Imagine the lark at the peak of it's song flight. Or a sand crane, circling higher and higher on the warm thermal currents of air. Effortless, climbing, reaching. This open, joyous flight doesn't happen just once. The news that a baby is on the way is the first time, but it's not the last time a mother's heart takes flight. Little things send it leaping. A first laugh or a first step. The first time with no training wheels. The first handmade Mother's Day card, scribbles and all. There are big things that set a mother's heart soaring, as well. Award ceremonies and graduations, badge awards and good report cards. I've found, though, that nothing makes a mother's heart soar quite like watching your baby get married. The enormity of the moment. The wishes, the prayers, the worry, the joy, the incredulity of "that's my baby", only my baby is a woman of great beauty, inside and out. And she's actually getting married...to a man...who she loves...and who loves her...and she's not my baby anymore...and it's so right and so good and so magical. A real "heart takes flight" moment. People talk about the newlywed's hearts, when it's really the mother's heart that takes flight and soars to the sun in joy, in supplication, in astonishment.
A mother's heart is not only capable of flight, it's also a frighteningly fragile thing. It's a wonder to think that something so strong, is so vulnerable. The heart of a mother can break like a twig, under the strain of a footfall. Mean words hurled in anger by a small child for the first time. "I hate you", even when you know they don't. But the worst breaking of a mother's heart is for the heartbreak of the child. Tears resulting from a bully's words or actions stream down a child's face, but sear a mother's heart into pieces. Watching your child struggle to learn, or experience the loss of a dream, or a first love, or a favorite pet, or innocence in the face of a cruelty, tear a mother's heart in two and then those pieces are flung to the wind." I'm their mother, I can't fix it, stop it, keep it, do anything about it", and it's that helplessness that seals the deal on a mother's broken heart.
But a mother's heart can sing like the angels in the next breath. The accomplishments of your child, big and small, bring forth a hum, a song, a lilt in a mother's heart. The first time they actually tie their own shoes, or make their own bed, or brush their teeth without you having to remind them. Sometimes it is a small hum, sometimes it's a symphony of song, but a mother's heart is capable of singing. That unsolicited hug, out of nowhere, for no reason. Now that's a singing moment. The yell "MOM" with the bang of the front door. Just the fact that your child is home and looking for you to share their world with you. The look when dinner tastes soooo good. "Can I have more?" "What's this called?" "Can we have this again tomorrow night?" Ahh, the song of accomplishment that rings in a mother's heart in those moments. A hum with a smile, a song with a skip. A mother's heart singing. When the kids are older, there are still mother's heart song moments. Again, that hug will get a mom every time. Or an unexpected phone call, "just to say hi". How about walking in to an unexpectedly clean kitchen. Now that's a symphony!
Just as a mother's heart sings, so a mother's heart can cry. Watching a child reap the consequence of a bad choice causes tears in a mother's heart. These are the sad choices of a preschooler caught hitting a friend, or the choices of a teenager breaking a rule. The consequences are meted out, the child rages, or dissolves, or pleads, or accepts...and the mother's heart cries. A mother's heart cries, too, over the irrevocable. The "can't fix it" things of life. The girl who wants to be tall, or short, or blond, or thin, or curvy, or whatever she's not. The boy who wants to be taller, or stronger, or better at sports, or not teased because he'd rather read, or embarrassed by his voice, his glasses, his feet. A mother's heart cries as her child is sick or in pain. She feels her child's pain as her own, and cries for the loss, the fear, the feelings of the child. But she also cries the anguish of the mother. The worry, the fear, the feelings of What can I do? What should I do? What did I miss? As the children grow, a mother's heart cries, because she's done her job. Her kids are becoming independent, they're making their own choices, their own life, their own way...and leaving her to stand on the porch and wave them off as they dance into their future.
A mother's heart waits...and waits...and waits. Waiting for the arrival of the baby is only the first wait a mother's heart endures. There's the waiting in the ER with a child who's broken their arm. The mother's heart waits with the anxious youngster wanting to find out if they made the team, the play, the party list. The mother's heart waits for morning with a croupy toddler and waits for midnight for a teen out on a first date. And waiting for answers, from her child, for her child, about her child, oh the waiting of a mother's heart.
The beauty of a mother's heart is in it's magnificent capacity to grow and expand. A mother's heart is infinitely expandable. Every mother wonders will there be enough love? Will there be enough for a baby, for 2, for 10? What about those children we take into our hearts, who are not of our bodies? The best friends, the lost puppy children, the ones our kids want to "save", is there room for all? And miraculously, there is room. There is enough love to go around, with love to spare. There's room for the best buddy, the BFF, the fiance', the in-law, the family of the in-law. Miraculous! There's room and more, there's love and more, there's capacity and more. It's the loaves and the fishes all over again, and it happens in a mother's heart every day, in every way. There's always enough with extra to spare, and it's been blessed by God.
A mother's heart grows. It grows in wisdom, it grows in experience, it grows in understanding. Through singing and crying, soaring and breaking, her heart is marked by and for her children. I watched a show on the dolphins of Australia's Shark Bay. Shark Bay is named because it is the home of sharks. Lots of sharks. All the time there are sharks. And these dolphins come to Shark Bay, not just to eat, or play or swim, they come to give birth. Literally in the home of the sharks, these dolphin mothers have their babies. And all the mother's have the scars of shark bites. These mothers do what they need to do to protect their babies. There was one particular mother the researchers watched from pregnancy, through the delivery of the baby. The mother was part of a pod of dolphins and just as "it takes a village to raise a child" for humans, the pod helps protect all the babies. This one particular mother and baby were missing for a couple of days. The researchers feared the worst. And then they returned, mother and baby. The baby was perfect; healthy, playful, growing, learning. Not a mark on its skin, not a worry in it's swim. And the mother had new shark bites to accompany the scars of previous bites. She placed herself between her baby and the sharks. She fought off the sharks. She protected her baby from the sharks. She bore the wounds of the sharks...for her baby.
And so a mother's heart grows and expands, and is marked and scarred by the experience of motherhood. A mother's heart is a work of the Master. Beautiful, miraculous, and a brief glimpse into the heart of the Father.
