A Mixture of Emotions

Last week at my OBGYN appointment, doctor said “I’d be fine if she came as early as October 15th…37 weeks is technically full term.”

Begin my freak out. 

So, considering our baby could come as early as two weeks from now to as late as a month from now, this ticking time bomb has some thoughts on the whole pregnancy thing.

If you knew high school Maddie, you would have known that she wanted to live the single life as an engineer in a loft downtown with no responsibilities to anyone and DEFINITELY no kids. Not that I didn’t like kids, but the whole pregnancy thing really freaked me out. Most of the sentences related to that subject started out as “your body goes through what???”

Then there’s the whole labor thing. Who in their right mind would want to go through the drama and the trauma of that???

Many of these thoughts were more of a reflection of the selfish person I was. Understandable for a teenager. What I am most thankful for is that God didn’t allow me to stay in that space. I'm also thankful that none of those fears have come true and I've had a relatively easy pregnancy compared to others.

Since being a teenager, God has taken me on this incredible journey. He’s softened my heart and allowed me to trust again. He introduced me to this incredibly patient man named Jared and showed me that yes, your heart may be hurt but we can’t allow it to get hard and bitter. 

At the beginning of this pregnancy journey, I had a lot of anxiety. All the questions came flooding in. All the uncertainly. Except this time, I also had this unnatural peace about everything. I knew 100% this is what God has planned. Throughout these last nine months it’s been the same. I have had conflicting emotions always intertwined in my heart. Fear has mixed with joy. Anxiety has mixed with peace. Uncertainty has mixed with faith.

I think that’s what this stage of preparation has been for. In the past, I have always strived to ONLY be happy. I was tired of feeling the negative emotions. I struggled to always be joyful and optimistic because that’s what a Christian should be if they trust God right? But what I found was when I wasn’t able to eliminate the negative emotions, I would just get depressed. Not exactly what I was trying to achieve.

In Psalms, we see David songwriting over and over again. Many of his writings start with some version of “this situation sucks” and end with “I trust you God.” It wasn’t cut and dry emotions all day long. It was an honest expression of mixed emotions and God called him a man after his own heart. Doesn’t that tell us how many mixed emotions God must feel all the time?

In Inside Out (probably my favorite Disney movie of all time) we see Riley as a child. Her memories are all one color showing the one emotion that she experienced during that memory.

All of her emotions are one color.

But when she grows after moving to San Fransisco, we see that her emotions become more complicated and are a MIXTURE of emotions…joy and sadness, anger and fear, etc. 

We see her emotions are now a mixture and more complicated.

As I think about the next month and the huge life change that we will be going through, I hope that I can learn to allow these mixtures of emotions to sit comfortably inside me. I don’t need to struggle to eliminate one or the other but instead, cherish all of the emotions that I feel when our little one gets here. 

I hope that learning how to do this not only allows me to be a better mom, but gives birth to a better me as well.