Love's standing ovation

I was grumpy the day he was born.

He didn't come when I wanted, or in the way I wanted him to.

He hadn't done what babies are suppose to do when they head out into the world.  Instead, he flipped himself around and lodged himself underneath my ribs, a literal pain in my side.

He paid for his choice with an abnormally shaped head for the first few months of his life.  Although, he didn't seem to mind not fitting in with all of the other babies.  I put a hat on him to cover up the differences.

They had held his red, wrinkly body up for me to see, but my brain was already drifting from the pain medication.  And while the room was still spinning, they placed him in my arms and wheeled me into recovery.  All of my mental protests couldn't convince the nurses that I wasn't ready to hold him.  This is, after all, what mothers do.

He was just shy of eight pounds, but I felt the true weight of that moment.  I was sure he was going to fall right out of my arms and onto the checkered hospital floor.  He wasn't even an hour old, and already I was aware of my incapabilities to keep him safe.

It has been nearly sixteen years since his birth, and that boy continues to choose his own way.  So many times I have found myself wanting him to take the path that I would choose; the easier road, the common sense way.  But I am learning more and more that he wasn't created to follow me.

He tells it to me straight, "You don't get me, Mom."

He isn't frustrated or angry, just matter of fact.  "Dad gets me."

I know it's true.  I hate it in a way.  I love it in another.  And I think this must be how we live both beautiful and broken.

Right now, more than ever, I wish that I did understand him more.  I see the weight on his soon-to-be man shoulders, and I pray it doesn't break him.  This world spins dangerous and dark with sin and loneliness.  Very often I want to swaddle him up and hold him close to me; away from this world that doesn't love him like I do.

But he wasn't made for that.

And there's a sting in my eyes, a hard ache in my throat when I realize how I am needed differently.  I step back and watch how he stands tall next to his dad, the one who gets him.  I see how they build furniture and fix sinks.  They wrestle too hard and too loud, and discuss who had the best play in the NFL.

I think to myself how proud I would be if his footsteps followed his father's.  They are brave.  They are sure.  They are strong.  How satisfying his life would be if he lived in the strengths of honesty, honor, self-discipline, and integrity.  I don't know how to be a man like that.  That's not why I was created.  I only know how to love a man like that, trust a man like that, lean into and respect a man like that.

I know this, I want to be the mother of a son like that.

My arms have done their job.  I have brought forth life and carried it to the place where it must find the strength to walk without me.  And now that they are empty, my hands are free to clap.  I see my tender heart ballooning up and out of me.  It is full of hope and faith for the boy-man's future.  I cannot pull it back, for there are no strings attached.  This is love's standing ovation.