Rediscovery

I think that it is amazing that God allows us to better understand ourselves through our children.  There are a lot of things that I have learned about myself since I became a mom, the biggest was how much I needed to die to my desires if I was going to be remotely good at the job.  That is something I continue to work on daily and possibly a topic for another blog some other day.

The thing I learned today was a fun discovery and it came through my son, Benaiah.  For anyone who has met Benaiah, you know that he loves to be silly.  His greatest desire when he wakes up in the morning (besides watching Mater's Tall Tales) is to make people laugh.  And, he is good at it.  He makes the best faces and says some really funny things.  In fact, he's been pretty funny almost since birth.  The following picture is a great example.

Now I am not sure which came first, his desire to make people laugh or the fact that he just made funny faces, saw the reaction that it got and liked the attention.  However it has happened, God made Benaiah to be this way.

As I was thinking about this and working on some things, I realized that I too enjoy making people smile.  Now this might not seem like the biggest discovery, but the revelation goes a little deeper.

David and I were having a conversation the other night about being a mom and how it changes you.  I know that a lot about me shifted from the moment I held my daughter, Emerson, in my arms.  Many of the immediate changes were not so good.  I became somewhat neurotic.  I felt inadequate and became more controlling because of it.  While I most certainly displayed some of these characteristics before motherhood, having a child greatly accentuated them.

It took me several years to even acknowledge how much of my self had been lost.  As I said above, as a parent we must die to many of our desires, but I think as moms we go through a process of being lost and then gradually rediscovering who we are in light of also being a mom.   Maybe that isn't true of most moms, but it is definitely true of me.

I am coming to realize what a beautiful process God has allowed this to be...dying to my selfishness while reviving who my Creator made me to be.

So, as I am rediscovering myself I am embracing my desire to make others smile.  I promise not to try to do this through awkward faces and inappropriate noises.  There's only so much I should learn from my son.