No Place I’d Rather Be {The Messy & Majestic of Motherhood}

Today we continue our series The Messy & Majestic of Motherhood. Kristin is an adoptive mama who I met through blogging. It’s been so much fun getting to know her and supporting each other’s writing dreams. Don’t forget to comment below for your chance to win the Mother’s Day Prize Pack at the end of the series! Kristin was sweet enough to include a fun surprise, too! The lucky winner will receive a $25 Shutterfly Gift Card to preserve your motherhood moments. 

I spent my first Mother’s Day in a hotel room.

And there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

Before that there were days I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a mom and days I didn’t think I would get to be a mom. To finally have my baby girl in my arms was where I wanted to be, regardless of the physical location.

Cate was born one week before Mother’s Day in a Bloomington, Indiana, hospital. My husband and I were there when the birth mother bravely delivered the 8-pound, 20-inch girl with a head of dark hair into our lives.

With an adoption comes paperwork and rules, so we couldn’t leave Indiana until people in that state and our neighboring home state of Kentucky gave us the green light. That was eight days after I became a mom – and one day after celebrating my first Mother’s Day with my husband and week-old daughter as well as my own mom, brother, and sister.

Life seemed right – and not because Greg gave me some picture frames to house all the pictures we snapped of our newborn girl. After a long, emotional season of infertility, I finally knew the baby girl who God chose for Greg and me to raise. Cate is the reason I didn’t get pregnant those nearly two years I cried out to God and wondered why I wasn’t getting my way.

This adoption that followed the infertility season was quick and exciting, but it was a process that built my faith like nothing else I’d experienced until that point. Of course, actually being a mom in the everyday moments has sanctified me more than any pile of paperwork.

Even so, holding my baby girl that first Mother’s Day in a Comfort Suites room gave me a glimpse of how God redeemed the hard season with what He knew was good and perfect for me.

I celebrated my fourth Mother’s Day in 2010 with that baby who was then 3 and her brother, who wasn’t quite 6 months old. We adopted Ben as a newborn in November 2009 after another process that confirmed God really has the details under control.

Being a mom to two kids has been another level of sanctification. Thankfully, I wasn’t the same naïve momma who held her newborn girl in a hotel room three years earlier. Days with two were especially hard in the beginning, but I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else.

Earlier this month, I celebrated my seventh Mother’s Day in my house that often has crumbs under the kitchen table, piles of laundry awaiting my attention, and various items sitting on the stairs to eventually make their way upstairs to one of the kids’ room. The volume is usually turned up around here with multiple people singing the “Frozen” soundtrack, smart phones alerting us of various commitments and conversations, and questions upon questions about every subject that can find its way into preschool and first-grade minds.

Greg and I thought we would have adopted another child by now. And we’ve tried. The third adoption process has never really amounted to a process. The desire is there and we believe if God intends for it to happen, then it will. But for now, we’re living this life – the messy, loud one right here.

This house is more complicated than that hotel room where we were introduced to parenthood, but this is where we’ve become a family. Our memories hang on these walls and were made in these rooms.  It is far from perfect but once again I find myself knowing there’s no place I’d rather be.

Kristin Hill Taylor lives in Murray, Ky., with her husband, Greg, and two kids – 7-year-old Cate and 4-year-old Ben. She can often be found trying to beat her husband in Words with Friends, playing games of Settlers of Catan with her best friends, listening to her daughter’s stories, reminding her son to be careful, or texting her friends. She believes in taking road trips, living in community, and documenting real life. You can keep up with her at www.kristinhilltaylor.com  or follow her on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

 

***Don’t forget to leave a comment below for your chance to win the Mother’s Day giveaway! A winner will be chosen at the end of this series! The Mother’s Day Prize Pack includes a copy of the following books: Bringing Home the Missing Linck: A Journey of Faith to Family, Trucks, Tantrums, & Trusting Him: Confessions of a Boy Mom (ebook), Undivided Mom (ebook), a motherhood journal, and a gift card for Shutterfly.