The first draft of this post was handwritten in a journal in January, 2024. Vera was five weeks old. It has been a joy to re-discover it and flesh out the story, fifteen months on.
Dear Vera,
A phenomenon: the subtle ways in which a woman feels peculiarly different days before taking a pregnancy test. I myself have never been patient enough to wait for an overdue period. My senses peak and I become far too distracted by what I’m noticing. More frequent bathroom visits, an increase in body temperature - most notably at night - and an unmistakably alive sensation in my womb.
Negative test upon negative test truly perplexed me, until your father casually ventured, ‘Maybe the tests have expired.’
Hang on a minute.
Hastily, I searched for evidence and sure enough, we were a mere three weeks off from the use-by date.
It was early morning. I jumped on the pushbike and made the quick ride to the beach by way of the all-hours chemist. I peed on the stick in the public toilet, and then used those nerve-wracking three minutes to order a coffee before getting comfortable in a spot overlooking the beach; the sun rising.
Two lines greeted me with what felt like a very pregnant bang! I celebrated with a squeal and squeezed happy tears from my eyes. Thank you. Oh thank you Lord, you have been so kind to me! And then the tears got saltier and a burden hit my heart…
Lord, please have mercy on my body…
and if not…
…give me strength.
I always sensed it might happen, ever since I was a little. Even having emancipated myself from my childhood at sixteen, and with a complicated relationship with my own mother, I sensed it. Into my early twenties, into a marriage that would end seven years later, throughout the grief and fray of loss, I sensed it. And into the anticipation of having met and fallen in love with your father, I sensed that a daughter would be a part of my story.
I can’t really explain it. In my life pre-Christ, I would have labelled it as karma; that after what I put my parents through, I would have to face my due. Perhaps it’s because I had an inkling of the gravity of raising a girl in these times. In my pride, I liked to take on hard things and overcome them - despite being pretty terrified of modern teenage girls as a adult. I built an identity around being capable, and hey, I was up for the challenge. Perhaps I wanted to right some wrongs; heal some hurts - or at least hoped that I might get a chance to. Likely, I probably felt as if I had something to prove in having a daughter and loving her well. Perhaps I merely wished and hoped - long before I knew to pray - that I might be able to both give and receive a special, tender, feminine love, reserved most especially for mothers and daughters.
But first, the Lord blessed us with your beautiful big brother.
His bright light sparkled throughout our days, joy on joy. His character arrived so very quickly; delight and adventure beamed from his spirit into my gooey, raw heart; forever changed from becoming a mother. I was a boy mama! The initiation was intoxicating, and after a history marred by loss and chaos, sleep deprivation was no match for the smitten bliss of having our most beloved baby in my arms.
When he was eighteen months old, I encountered Jesus and our lives changed in every way. Some months later, your father proposed, and we wed. I held your brother in my arms for half of the ceremony. Daddy’s vows left not a dry eye in the house. Our honeymoon was a quiet two days - just the three of us - in Byron Bay. I sat on a sand dune and watched the boys chase each other by the water’s edge and I remember thinking: these are the glory days. Newly wed to the right man, a life humming with a spritely toddler, and there I was, thinking about you. You were conceived that weekend. You were so wanted and longed for that I almost forgot all about Hyperemesis Gravidarum.
Which brings me back to those two strong lines shouting POSITIVE, and my cries to the Lord for mercy. HG casts a shadow over what should be the most joyous time in an expecting mother’s life, but my love I don’t wish to speak about this too much with you. I’ve always promised myself that I wouldn’t. Instead, I declare life over your womb. My daughter, I declare health, radiance and supernatural energy over your pregnancies and that of any daughters you may have, in Jesus’ name. Just know this: the Lord did indeed give me strength. He is faithful.
As we approached Tarak’s third birthday, I was nine months pregnant with a mystery. (We chose not to learn your sex until birth) After settling into my role as boy mum, it became a stretch to even imagine a world with a daughter now, despite having that shortlist of girls names in my heart, and not a single contemplation of a boys name. Despite buying those little overalls and knits, just in case. Despite analysing the differences in both pregnancies and reasoning that such small changes ‘must mean it’s a girl.’ Oh how a woman will work herself into a lather attempting to guess at information she has explicitly requested not be revealed! Our everyday was bustling with BMX rides, wrestling, ball sports, enthusiastic, ever-growing sentences about animals! monster trucks! diggers!
And then, Vera, you arrived.
I pulled you out of the water and brought you to my chest. You emerged arching your back and neck, as if you wanted to take in the view of Tarak and Daddy, kneeling behind me. ‘Hi baby,’ Daddy welcomed you calmly. ‘Baby’, Tarak quietly parroted. We sipped in the enormity of the moment - that you were here! After another challenging pregnancy, and two and a half weeks of bizarre pre-labor, you were here. I marvelled at how similar you looked to your brother when he was a newborn. Minutes were eaten up as we cooed over you, while your birth song, Yeshua, continued softly in the background. Jesus’ presence was think and undeniable.
It wasn’t until we were prompted: ‘Baby brother or baby sister?’ that I remembered the mystery was about to be solved, for good. A gentle celebration of ‘It’s a girl’ was spoken over our little family, and darling, I shook my head in disbelief and cried with joy. I pressed my head back into Daddy and whispered: ‘We have a daughter’.
And in the most brilliant comedic timing, your sweet brother broke the sacredness of that still moment by saying ‘Come on girl, get the boobie, there’s milk.’
I was not ready. I wasn’t ready for the loveliness that simply poured out of you and filled a room. I wasn’t ready for your extraverted affections that sometimes make my shy cheeks blush. I wasn’t ready for how quickly you would so obviously love your brother, or the way your femininity would ooze by way of cuddles and soft kisses for those you love. Or the strength in your voice as you would say (demand) mumma! I wasn’t ready for your beauty. For those dimples. For those giggles. For the ways you extend your arms when only mama will do. Selfishly, you’ve been incredibly healing for me.
Vera, I’ve waited my whole life for this family. In all I’ve traversed, experienced, achieved and let go of in 37 years, I know now that it was all preparing me for living out these years as your mother.
As I write this, there is a concerted cultural shift to minimise what motherhood requires in this age, or even that it is desirable. Our very real biological clocks have become hijacked by convenience, technology, delegation and a clarion call that a woman should place higher importance on her career than on her very real desire to grow a family. A generation of women are being so easily - and purposefully - distracted from what is good, true, beautiful and lasting, and they’re not discovering that they’ve been duped until it’s almost too late. It’s also not their fault.
I write with a familiarity of both worlds; I have compassion. I know how the world and all its dazzle grips and chokes. I know what it’s like for people to ask me ‘how’s business?’ before ‘how are the children?’
I wonder if you will ever even know what a Girl Boss is, Vera? By the time you’re of age, will the trend prove that it has legs and live on? Or will it be archived in favour of a cultural swingback, rich in tradition? Certainly no generation before us millennials experienced such a schism to the self. The Boomers learnt that motherhood (along with housewifery and homemaking) ‘wasn’t enough’ and so us millennials were raised without necessary constraint and discipleship and instead plastered FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS bumper stickers on our cars. (‘92 Holden Commodore station wagon with the paint peeling off, thank you very much) What was the cost of this? Because I look around now and I see women proudly proclaim that they want to be more than ‘just’ a mum. I hear frustration at the snail-like pace in which the school holidays are coming to an end. Get these kids out of my hair! I saw myself do the juggle, and I suffered. I observe others do the juggle. The more we juggle, the angrier we become.
We’re angrier, because if we’re honest, parenting requires much more of us than chasing a career. We’re angrier because we can hide from work to a degree, but we cannot hide from our mothering. We’re angrier because the ones who cop our anger are the innocent; the ones we love most see the worst in us.
Vera, parenting causes a revolution to happen inside of us. There is no stopping it. It’s a rollercoaster and I am strapped in tight but I also know that God’s likely going to unbuckle on me anyway, because he commands me to freefall into his everlasting arms. You - our generation’s children - deserve to be shown that motherhood is an admirable endeavour, a worthy pursuit. That it is indeed enough. That it is not everything, after all, God made us in his image as creative beings, but it is enough of a worthy vocation. I would lay it all down a hundred times over to have this slow, soaking childhood with you. It’s you I get to walk with through the gates of heaven, not any of my accolades or achievements.
I pray to raise you into a resourceful young woman who can bless any room she enters. I also pray that you can be shown the golden joy, the expectant delight and the beauty of immersive motherhood - despite my own sin and shortcomings - and not through my own actions, but through Christ at work in me. Motherhood is a calling of epic proportions requiring humility, long-suffering, a servant’s heart, a vision, a good sense of humour and a complete and utter dependance on God. I pray motherhood is appealing to you.
Sweet Vera, I’m unsure how old you’ll be when you read this, but I pray that as you soak in these words, one day when I am aged - perhaps you’ll be a mother yourself - you’ll witness the story of someone who, by God’s grace, wrote of the awe, wonder, challenge, heartaches and beauty of having been equipped to mother in God’s Kingdom, and you can glean wisdom here. We are in this world honey, but we are not of it, and so with your future in front of us I once again cry out, Lord have mercy. May you read this and the letters that follow and allow these words to confirm that in this broken world, there is peace. Rest is a person, and his name is Jesus. May these pages serve, in some small way, as the hands and feet of God, revealing the gospel, and illuminating the tremendous thankfulness I experience everyday of having been given such unmerited gifts as you, your brother, and Daddy.
I love you, dear Vera,
Mama.
Thankyou! As a mum of five I often felt I wasn’t providing enough material support to my family but I am right there on gods grass playing in the sun with them
Wow. Just so wow. ❤️