A Mother Daughter Love Story {The Messy & Majestic of Motherhood}

Today we continue our series The Messy & Majestic of Motherhood. Lori is an adoptive mama and when I read this post, which first appeared on her blog, I thought it was perfect for this series.  It’s an amazing letter she wrote to her daughter on her Gotcha Day. 

She snuggles up close, tucking her little body snug in to my shape. He hair falls long, a cascade of waves on to the pillow, her sweet little girl smell falls fresh upon me.

And it still amazes me, eight years later, how perfectly she fits next to me.

As if she grew inside of me and we are the most natural fit.

But she didn’t, and yet we are.

My heart bubbles over with love for this little girl, and has from the moment we glimpsed that first picture of her.

The day I looked in to those sad, tear filled eyes.  The day my knees went weak and she stole the breathe clean out of me.

She was mine, a part of me, living half a world away and I needed desperately to hold her.

Alone yet so abundantly wanted.

This child grew in my heart, just as real and alive as one in my womb. 

And just as one watches her baby grow and develop on the black and white pages of a sonogram, I watched life sprout from her tiny body right before my very wide eyes.    With each cuddle and kiss, a spark.    A rub of her arm and she would grow statue still…..absorbing touch.  A wipe of a tear, and she was staring deep in to my eyes. The first time she laughed and her face lit the room and my heart.

I watched life take flight in those eyes.

And now this volley happens nightly…my “I-love-you’s” turn in to her “I-love-you’s” and more and more we love and at the end of countless “I-love-you-more’s” she says “I WIN.”

And I wonder how two little words can bubble up such emotion in me.  Because I remember when you and I were new to each other and I carried you around the streets of your birth.  And locals would sometimes whisper and sometimes loudly in my face label you with two other words…”lucky girl.”   How wrong that seemed to me to think of you as lucky.  For if there was luck and one was bestowed a certain amount in a lifetime, surely I was the one heaping over with it.

But I know luck has no place here.  A living, breathing God has weaved our lives in to one and we together fulfill a purpose and plan in one another’s life.

And there you are…singing your heart out in the back seat a song so full of meaning for my sweet 9 year old to be singing…I pull to the side of the road and watch you in the rear view mirror as you belt out these words….

 I’m Tired I’m worn

My heart is heavy

From the work it takes

To keep on breathing

I’ve made mistakes

I’ve let my hope fail

My soul feels crushed

By the weight of this world

 And I know that you can give me rest

So I cry out with all that I have left

 Let me see redemption win

Let me know the struggle ends

That you can mend a heart

That’s frail and torn

I wanna know a song can rise

From the ashes of a broken life

And all that’s dead inside can be reborn

Cause I’m worn***

And we know, you and I.  We have seen where the struggle ends and we have held the mended heart in each other’s arms.   We sing from the ashes of two broken lives made whole again by the One who can restore all things.  We have seen our lives redeemed in each other’s arms and through the One who orchestrates all things.

And so today, all I can say to you and to our God, I love you more!!!!

***Lyrics from Tenth Avenue North, Worn

 

Lori is the wife of a Navy Chaplain, and the mother to three little (and not so little) ones.  She shares about her struggle with infertility, their great abundance through adoption, and the military life at www.standingwiththemilitaryfamily.com.

 

***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.