Choosing To See Magic

Before you become a mom, there are ideas of how it will be. You think of the magic, the love; how incredible it will be to hold your own child. There is wondering of how it will go, but you don’t know what you don’t know, and the fear isn’t so big. You dream of the day that baby is born, of the day that baby will smile. All the milestones and all of the everydays in between. You can’t wait for motherhood to begin.

Then your first child is born, perhaps a second and third follow. It becomes your reality, this motherhood life. The everydays blur one into the next. Sometimes you stop and think, “The days fly by, but where do they go? What do I do with my time?” Perhaps you had postpartum depression. Maybe it was a colicky baby. Whatever it was, you lost the magic of motherhood. Life became just life, duller than you imagined it to be. The dreams of the future don’t come as easily and you become stuck in the monotony of the days. You feel a discordance with what you pictured before and what is now. Do you look with envy at the newly engaged, the newly married, the ones whose faces are glowing as they announce their due date? Do you wonder how they can be so happy, that they have no idea? When we have a vision of how something will be, it can be hard when it doesn’t turn out that way.

I look down at my baby boy, five months old and growing too fast. It’s so cliché because it’s so true! The lights from the Christmas tree reflect in his eyes as he reaches for the ornaments. It hits me in this moment, that there is magic here.

I used to feel angry – why didn’t anyone tell me it would be this hard? There were times that I would look at a newly married couple and wonder what happened to me – when did I become so bitter and hardened? But it’s merely shifting my perspective on life. Motherhood isn’t what I thought it would be and I have had to do much painful growing, but look at what I would’ve missed out on if I hadn’t taken that step.

I want to challenge you to find the magic again. This life may not be the picture-perfect idea that you had dreamed up, but find the beauty in this life that is yours. Choose to see the beauty in what is.