**I have been struggling with this post since the week before Easter. I have written, backspaced, added and edited until I can't see straight and I'm still quite sure I haven't done the story justice. But alas, I hit "Publish" and have faith that God can use the message despite the messenger's inability to write a coherent sentence.
You know how people always say everything changes once you have a baby... well, let me tell ya, they weren't lying. Yes, you'll most likely never enjoy a long leisurely shower again and running into the grocery store "real quick" will become a thing of the past and a wild night out on the town will mean you stay out past 8:30 pm - but that's not what I'm talking about. What comes to mind when I consider how my life has changed in the past eight months are bigger, more complex things, like how I have a completely new perspective on everything in life.
Before Cooper I felt like my job was important... and now I look at this little boy who we are responsible for raising to be a kind, humble, compassionate, happy, loving, adventurous, generous, Christ-centered man. Now I understand what having a truly important job feels like.
Before Cooper watching or reading the news was something I did daily while basically brushing all the bad, scary stuff to the side and listening for anything that might pertain to or impact me personally - like a traffic report or ball game scores. Now the news of a child being abused or abducted strikes an absolute gut wrenching fear in my stomach. The story of a tsunami or mudslide or Heaven forbid, a sink hole, millions of miles away will leave me marking that destination off our "Travel To Do" list as unsafe. People, I've become a nut, I read recall lists like it's my job.
Before Cooper, holidays were fun times spent with our families celebrating Jesus's birth or resurrection... Now the Christmas story brings tears to my eyes as I understand the miracle of childbirth and am in awe of the Baby Jesus. And Easter, oh Easter...
I am a firm believer that God uses different events in your life to mold you, shape you, teach you. It seems that Easter brings a new lesson my way annually. A couple of years ago, God used Easter and blogging to teach me a profound lesson on forgiveness (You can read more about my fight with forgiveness here). Last year, God used pregnancy hormones and a praise and worship service to teach me about the depths of God's love portrayed through the Easter story that I had failed to grasp before (You can read about that tearful experience here.) This year, God has used my precious Cooper and his very first little boo boo as a complete game changer for Easter. Here's the story...
The weekend before Easter Brandon, Cooper and I spent the night with my parents at their lake house. To be completely open and honest, Brandon and I had been having an on-going little feud for most of the drive that was only heightened by the fact that sweet Cooper had woke up when we stopped for a quick drive thru dinner and proceeded to scream bloody murder for the remaining two hour drive. It was less than awesome. We pulled in, unloaded the car with obvious frustration and I took Cooper back to the bedroom to change him into his pajamas so that we could bring this dreadful evening to an end.
He was feeling much better - happy to be out of his car seat, happy to have the full, undivided attention of his grandparents, happy to be in his comfy jammies... Baby boy was feeling good, stretching out and kicking his little feet like a horse that had been kept in a stall all day and was finally free to roam the pasture. The only problem was his kicking was moving my laptop dangerously close to the edge of the bed. So I sat him up, grabbed my laptop, said "Don't move." and turned to stick the laptop back in my bag...
Well, you know how this story ends... with a "thump" and then a screaming cry.
The Little Prince had not rolled, but instead dove, face first off the side of the bed. (Let's take a brief pause to say thank you Lord for letting us be at the lake where the bed is low and the floor is carpeted unlike at our house with wood floors and tall beds. Amen.) I snatched the little tiny up so quickly he may have suffered from whip lash following the initial injury. My mind was racing frantically - "He's screaming - that's a good sign... but it's also a bad sign, is something broke?! All his body parts are moving frantically - good sign... All of his facial features seem to have remained in tact - good sign... wait, his nose!" His little tiny nose was beat red/blue and starting to appear as though it might bleed.
"BRANDON!!!!!!!" It's really, really nice to have a daddy that is also a doctor... more so for the Mommy than for the injured child. Brandon and I met running down the hall. I spit out the highlights - "I turned around for one second (infamous words) and he fell off the bed face first and I'm dreadfully afraid he has broken his little perfect nose on the side board of the bed! Is it broke?!"
Brandon instantly switched into calm doctor mode and gave Cooper a quick exam. He assured me, despite the blood curdling screams coming from our Little Prince, he was just fine and his nose wasn't broke... it is still made up of cartilage that hasn't turned to bone yet... blah-blah-make-Mommy-feel-better-talk-blah.
As soon as I was sure Cooper would live and his little face would remain perfect (once the giant carpet burn on his nose went away), I fell apart. I covered my face with my hands and burst into tears! Brandon passed the still crying Cooper over to my mom and came into the bedroom to console me... Yes, I know, a clear forfeit of the already long gone "Mother of the Year Award."
Well, needless to say, I out cried Cooper. Not one of my proudest moments. Once I got control of myself somewhat, I went out on the patio and took Cooper from my mom... I squeezed that baby tighter than I have ever squeezed him before. Tears poured down my face as his little body melted into mine. I rocked and soothed and hugged and whispered "I love yous" and "I'm sorrys" over and over and over into his little ear.
You know how your parents always told you that when you hurt they hurt worse... I learned in that minute that they were telling the truth. My heart felt like it had been cut wide open. It was a different type of pain that I had never felt before. Instead of putting Cooper in his pack 'n play as we normally do, he slept wrapped up tight, safe and secure, in my arms all night long.
The love a parent has for their child is one you cannot grasp until you become a parent. What you would do for your child is something you cannot understand until you look into your baby's eyes for the first time and see the way they look at you - trust you, love you, believe that you can truly make everything alright. When I think about how much I love Cooper, I can't help but wonder how Mary felt about her sweet baby, Jesus.
The Bible tells us that the night Mary found out she was pregnant with God's child she was very afraid... I've always assumed she was afraid because she woke up to a gigantic angel in her room - that would make me afraid! But this year I realized there there were other reasons she was afraid... She had just been told that she was pregnant by God - try explaining that one to your fiancé, not to mention the rest of the world. Maybe she felt the immense responsibility of raising JESUS, the Son of God, the Savior of the Universe - that is no doubt the most high pressure job of all time. What if she had the foresight to think of how her son would inevitably be met with hostility - criticized and mocked... Could she have possibly realized that the very people he had been sent to save would turn against him, spit on him, beat him and hang him on the cross? I hope, for her sake, she didn't think that far ahead... I hope she didn't ask the angel how it all would end... but as a mother, I know that worst case scenarios involving your child tend to occupy a large portion of your brain.
I tend to put Mary in the "young girl in a barn with a sweet little baby Jesus" box, but this year it dawned on me that Mary was still the mommy of Jesus when he was hanging on the cross... and that changes everything.
This Easter, I realized that I cannot begin to grasp the pain that Jesus went through for me. For my husband. For my son. For my family. For YOU... And that's what makes the gift of his life even more sweet - He did it for each and every one of us, just as He did it for Mary, his own mother.
I think it's safe to say, mothers as a whole, tend to struggle with guilt. Every time I saw that little red mark on my precious Cooper's nose, pangs of guilt hit me over and over and over. I should have never sat him on the bed. I knew better than to turn and put something away with him sitting so close to the edge. It's all my fault he fell off the bed. I could have prevented him from this pain. This year, I believe I had to feel pain so that I wouldn't take the sacrifice of the Son for granted any longer.
It is impossible for me to fathom the hurt that Mary experienced as she saw her baby hanging on the cross... I think about how much I hurt over Cooper's little skinned nose and my heart just begins to ache for Mary. The thought of seeing my son in that kind of pain makes me sick to my stomach to even think about, and then to pause and let it soak in that He died on the cross for her. He took the beating, the mocking, the lashings, the humiliation for Mary's sins, as well as the sins I have committed... To try to put myself in Mary's shoes just makes my heart feel like it's being ripped into a multitude of pieces.
What I would give to take away any little tiny second of pain from Cooper... How Mary must have felt like she too was dying as she watched her baby hanging on that dark, heavy cross... and for her sins.
To be completely honest, my mind still hasn't put all these feelings, emotions and thoughts into a logical order. I'm quite sure I haven't got to the bottom of what God is trying to show me this Easter as he has revealed the well known story to me from a totally new perspective, from the view point of a mother.
But I do know this - seeing Jesus as Mary's baby made him much more real to me this year. Seeing Jesus as Mary's son made his pain, his sacrifice, have a much heavier toll on me.
This year Mary showed me just how human Jesus was...
Before this Easter, I had the tendency to envision Jesus just like the pictures in the children's books where his feet don't quite touch the ground and he has the big halo glow around him. This year, I saw a man who stopped to take care of his mother right before saving the whole wide world - past and present.
This year, Jesus became real to me because I got to know his Mommy. What an overwhelming gift we have all been given...
Jesus paid it all
All to him I owe
Sin had a left a crimson stain
He washed it white as snow.
Be Blessed,
Raegan
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