![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/shutterstock_521800174.jpg\")
<\/a>Then one work trip to London, I couldn\u2019t get over the jet lag. Every three hours I was starving, and no amount of sleep was enough. I sneaked out of bed to take a pregnancy test before dawn. Two little blue lines stared back at me. For three days I told no one. Thoughts, questions, anxieties swirled over me.<\/p>\nI felt numb.<\/h3>\n
I had a very rigid and narrowly defined idea of good motherhood. Good mothers don\u2019t work outside the home. They don\u2019t travel the world. They abandon all their own interests.
\nRight?<\/p>\n
I felt like my identity was a rug being yanked out from under my feet. Without the team of friends I\u2019d invested my last several years into, I didn\u2019t know who I was, or who I could become.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t realize that much of my depression was also chemical. I\u2019d never encountered an emotional obstacle I couldn\u2019t conquer \u201cmind over matter\u201d. It didn\u2019t help that my all-day, all-night nausea lasted the entire pregnancy. It also didn\u2019t help that I suffered severe insomnia and went for weeks with less than 8 hours of sleep a week<\/em>.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t have the courage to tell my husband \u2013 every night I\u2019d lie awake listening to him sleep, and the vicious cycle of negative mental talk would pull me deeper into despair.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll never be a good enough mother.\u201d No matter how hard I tried, I couldn\u2019t \u201csnap out of it.\u201d The guilt was drowning me alive. I felt all these emotions, and then felt shame for feeling them in the first place.<\/p>\n Six weeks before our son was born, I finally starting sharing what I was going through. Anger, desperation and discouragement poured out. Then they asked, \u201cWhy have you carried this weight alone for so long?\u201d<\/p>\n Because I didn\u2019t want to let others\u00a0down. Because, though my values were strong, I\u2019d never integrated them into my own identity enough to release my fear of judgment by onlookers.<\/p>\n Then, one late fall morning, HE\u00a0arrived. A\u00a07 pound, 12 ounce, olive-brown bundle, with wide gray eyes and a Kewpie doll fauxhawk, staring up at me like he was soaking up the world\u2019s genius with every waking moment.<\/p>\n They laid him on my chest in the operating room, and I was mush. I stared at him, like new mothers do, inspecting each miniature finger and marveling at this tiny person who\u2019d just rocked my world.<\/p>\n With vivid clarity, I knew that I\u2019d never give quite the same weight to external opinions again. It was as though my entire identity snapped into place for the first time in my life.<\/p>\n I parent differently than you? No problem. I didn\u2019t care about peripherals any more. My identity was clear. If something didn\u2019t directly affect the well-being of my family, my children, or the projects I\u2019d chosen to accomplish for clients (I launched my own company two years later) \u2014 then it wasn\u2019t worth losing sleep.<\/p>\n Oddly, my depression disappeared within 48 hours after delivery. The next year, while expecting our daughter, I wasn\u2019t ashamed to get help when prenatal depression loomed\u00a0again.<\/p>\n It\u2018s taken a few years to share this story. It isn\u2019t easy to delve back and relive the darkness. The good thing? I\u2019ve learned that time can change perspective on things that seem unbearable in the moment.<\/p>\n Despite all my fears, I discovered a new life\u00a0track that I\u2019d never known was an option before. God has\u00a0worked out ways to minister to other women in difficult or abusive situations, while meeting our essential needs and still homeschooling my children to\u00a0meet their special needs. The good thing about being on the other side, is now I can see where God was leading, what I was learning \u2014 though I was blind to it then.<\/p>\n Sometimes, hindsight makes all the difference.<\/p>\n Sometimes, the darkest times require hindsight to become clear. I had brutal pregnancies. I threw up the entire time. I developed complications that landed me in the High Risk Ante-Natal Unit on weeks of bed rest. With our second child, I found myself hugging the toilet until I thought I\u2019d puked my toenails up. My…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1603,"featured_media":7425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2],"tags":[200,182],"thb-sponsors":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-7424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emotional-health","category-lifestyle","tag-emotional-health-2","tag-mind-body-spirit","post_format-post-format-image"],"acf":[],"views":901,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7424"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7432,"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7424\/revisions\/7432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7424"},{"taxonomy":"thb-sponsors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thb-sponsors?post=7424"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeandhealth.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=7424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n\u201cI\u2019ll never be able to work or travel with my team again, because now I\u2019ll be a mom.\u201d
\n\u201cI hate myself for not being more thrilled about this precious gift of life.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat kind of awful woman isn\u2019t ecstatic\u00a0to be a mother?\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019m a pastor\u2019s wife, how can I possibly have these shameful feelings in the first place?\u201d
\n\u201cIf I tell anyone the thoughts that go through my mind, they\u2019ll think I\u2019m a terrible person.\u201d
\n\u201cIf I\u2019m honest about this, will anyone\u00a0still love me?\u201d<\/p>\nBecause I was ashamed.<\/h3>\n
\nBecause most of my adult life I\u2019d been terrified of displeasing others.
\nBecause I was angry that nobody in my inner circle had figured it out and stepped in to help me, already.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nBecause I wanted to be liked<\/em> more than I had the courage to lead<\/em>.<\/h3>\n
In that moment, my fear of anyone else\u2019s judgment evaporated.<\/h3>\n
\nMy house isn\u2019t as nice as yours? Big deal.
\nYou hold a contrary opinion? It\u2019s a free country.<\/p>\n<\/a>As I look at my amazing and beautiful children, I can\u2019t imagine each day without their charm and zest. I\u2019m a single mother now, and I\u2019ve experienced\u00a0what it means to fight tooth and nail to keep your babies safe and protected. When our family life fell apart due to the consequences of addiction and abusive cycles, my children gave me the strength and determination to rise above, to pursue healing, to find forgiveness, to rebuild from the ashes (that story\u2019s here<\/strong><\/a>).<\/p>\n
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