Being a Mother of Three

Being a Mother of Three

I feel like I've been doing a lot of talking about how frustrated I am and how difficult life is, so I want to clarify:

I am loving being a mother of three.  I love getting to know each one of them, and seeing their smiles and hearing the surprising things they each say.  I love feeling them all crowd around me and snuggle in close when we're reading books at night.  I love feeling their soft skin and kissing their faces, and looking at them and memorizing each feature.  I love watching each of them learn and figure things out, and I love seeing what each one is interested in and how they explore.  I love thinking about how each one will grow up, and what is special about each personality, what they will grow out of and what they will grow into.

And (perhaps) most of all, I love watching them together.  I love seeing their friendships and their connection.  I love hearing how Emerson and Hibiscus defend each other and stick together at school.  I love watching the bigger ones be tender towards Buttercup and help her out, and seeing the pride on their faces when they fix her problems.  I love watching them play, and seeing how they build upon each other's ideas.  I love watching them run and tumble around the lawn, and how they try new things when they watch each other.  I love watching how they are learning to have pride in each other, worry about each other, comfort each other.  I sometimes even enjoy watching them fight, because then they start to figure out how to work it out, or I see them have empathy for each other.  And also, I know the fighting and the worrying means that they are trusting each other and letting out their emotions together.

I even love going places with all of them.  I enjoy the challenge of keeping an eye on all of them, and hearing what they're thinking about and seeing what they explore.  I like the feeling of being together as a big family, and being busy serving food and balancing wants and thinking of things to do and figuring them out.  I like being busy with children and surrounded by children.

So, a lot of things are hard right now.  A lot of those have to do with our situation, and feeling so isolated and with so little productive to do.  Because I'm isolated I'm also feeling exhausted, both because I don't have help in the practical matters and because I don't have my usual activities that help me feel regenerated and peaceful.  Some more has to do with struggling with cultural differences, from grocery shopping and the heat, to "advice" that is frustrating to me and to people treating my children in a way that I don't like.  And yes, some of it is the children themselves.  But I know that there's a lot of difficult stuff going on for them, too, that won't go on forever, and that the transition was going to be difficult no matter what but that we will settle in together eventually.

Meanwhile, this is part of the story and part of our family.  I am feeling "stuck" in Uganda right now, but I am also feeling incredibly blessed that I am really getting to know my children's country.  I am making friendships and hearing stories and not just basing my opinions on a few things I saw or the only things I heard in a few days' or a few weeks' trip.  I think about what I thought I knew about Uganda when I'd been here a month, and I know my relationship with this country is so much more deep and true!  I also know that it doesn't compare to really living here for a year or two or three, and that probably I would come out of this frustrated funk if I were here for longer.  But at this point in my life, I can't practically stay in another country for years, and meanwhile I feel like it is a huge blessing for all my children to have this experience even though it is limited.

"All my children"..... I am so happy to be able to say that, instead of "my child" or "both my children."  I feel like finally we have arrived at where we are meant to be --- which is on a long journey of family-ness!