Why Did God Give Me Girls?
Why did God give me girls? I wish this question didn’t plague me like a nagging riddle I am unable to solve. Until the moment pink confetti rained down on my head, I was convinced, down to the very marrow in my bones, that I would be a boy mom. Football/baseball mom, check. Navigating girlfriend’s heartbreaks, check. Lots of momma’s boy cuddles, check. My life was planned out, two boys, hours upon hours of baseball practices, riding the waves of teenage boyhood, and teaching them what a women’s love meant was what my future as a boy mom was made of. To be completely transparent, each time the sonogram confirmed “girl” a small twinge of disappointment set in.
I’ve painfully learned, because God knows I have to learn the hard way, that it’s in our disappointments that God is the most near. We have a choice. We can let our disappointments direct our hearts away from God or allow them to lay a foundation for a life richer in more love, joy and hope than we could have ever imagined for ourselves.
The lessons of meeting my girl mom fears head on started as early as the buying their first outfit. Is this too girly? Is it girly enough? Does she need a bow? Or is that too much? Nurturing them to become the best version of themselves is something I constantly wrestle with. I often want control over who they become. I find my prayers for their future sounding a lot like, God don’t let them make the same mistakes I did. Thinking about their teenage years sends chills of fear up and down my body. I hold my breath in anticipation that their future is already plagued with my worst traits, only magnified. I can already see so much of myself in them at the ages of 3 and 1. Its not just in the way they scrunch their noses when they smile or their unruly wavy hair, but in their tendency to get emotionally flooded or the way they let out an exasperated sigh in moments of frustration.
Right now being a girl mom is lots of tears over brushing hair, battles over what to wear, and refereeing fights over dolls. Sooner than I want it will look like shopping trips, battling over what they can’t wear, and mending heartbreaks. As we continue down a well worn road of building our mother daughter relationships we will reach the fertile grounds of learning together. Learning forgiveness, how to cherish one another, and what true love really looks like.
As another day of being a girl mom, mama to drama as I often say, comes to an end my own emotional exhaustion hits. I find myself crying out to Jesus. He wipes away my unreasonable expectations with mercy and reminds me to rely more and more on him. Daily I am humbled staring face to face with a smaller version myself. It is like the blind man meeting Jesus on the road, begging for restored vision. It’s a daily cry of, Lord let me see my girls as you see them, not through the lens of what has blinded me. My fears, my self-imposed limitations, my faults are all on a beautiful messy display for them absorb.
I am so glad that God knew better than me. I’m learning how to gracefully mourn the life I thought would be. The legacy of our surname being left for further generations fades away with the dreams of spending Friday nights adorning my boy’s football pin. Pruning me into a girl mom has been painful, but it wouldn’t have been as fruitful as the life I planned. Seeing my daughters wrestle with the same emotions I’ve burdened myself with, I can already see the future victories that we are currently battling. It means I get the opportunity to teach them their heart beauty is far more significant than their physical beauty, that boys might bring happiness but won’t bring you joy, that being kind to others is the greatest gift you can give, that their value comes from embracing failure as an opportunity to learn, that dismissing people who make you feel unworthy is necessary, how to seek out help when the burdens of life feel too big, that opening your heart to experiences that stretch you are essential and placing your trust in Christ alone is the difference between death and life. I didn’t know I needed to be a girl mom, but thankfully God did.
