I recently sat with my seven year old as he poured his heart out to me. There was not a lot I could do other than hold the space for him to release his pent up emotions. I blogged about this experience in my monthly Motherhood Later Than Sooner guest blog post and I paste the link here. It is a reminder to us all that sometimes the most courageous thing we, as moms, can do for our kids is nothing other than sit with them and listen.

http://blog.motherhoodlaterthansooner.com/2011/11/watching-your-children-suffer-by-leta.html

My Random House dictionary defines meditation as “thought; reflection; contemplation.” It has taken me years to overcome the idea of meditation as being an active practice of sitting cross-legged, eyes closed and focusing on my breath while thinking of absolutely nothing. Now, I think of meditation as being an integral part of my daily life. It isn’t something I do for 30 minutes each morning. It’s something I do whenever I need to go within and regroup my perspective. If there is something bothering me, I sit down and meditate on why it is bothering me. I may not be able to do this immediately. Family responsibilities often keep me from being able to drop everything and go contemplate an issue I am having with myself, my husband or one of my children. Still, I find a time when it is convenient. The moment may not come until I am lying in darkness after everyone has gone to bed. The point is I deal with things that come up in my life by meditating on them – and meditation for me has become a form of prayer. When I meditate I don’t try and clear my mind of all thoughts. Rather, I sit with a problem until I can clear the negative emotions that I am feeling around that problem. Meditation has become my primary form of acknowledging my personal responsibility for my own happiness, my state of mind and the level of internal peace I feel in any given moment. Yet, it’s my own form of meditation, made up entirely by me to suit my temperament, schedule and lifestyle. Almost every conversation I have involves the words, “I meditated on it.” The point is that my meditation is not a “zoning out,” but a thoughtful time of reflection and uncovering the superficial layers of a situation to arrive at the part of it where I can do something proactive to feel positive again. Often my meditation is simply a moment I take to be conscious of my blessings. Here is an example of what I mean. This morning I wanted to take a bath. I felt guided to take my 2-week old infant into the bath with me for his first ever bath. Lying in the water with him on my knees, I massaged his body and stroked his head with some conditioner and realized what an amazing opportunity this bath was to really look at my new baby. Both of us naked and alert, I could just notice him and his newness. I spend a lot of time tending to the needs of my children. Nowhere is this truer than keeping a newborn alive during the critical first couple of months. Right now I spend the majority of my interactions with my youngest either feeding him, clothing him or changing his diaper. When he’s asleep in his bassinet, I am using that time to either work myself (like now) or tend to a need of one of my other children. Feeding is another time when I can look down at him and be present, doing nothing. I try and do this as often as I can, but often I am tempted by a good book or my attention is pulled away by some other distraction. The bath, however, was different. The door was closed to keep the heat in. There was no one else in the house. It was intensely intimate. While he sat there on my knees looking around, my thoughts were taken to his newness, then to the tradition of christening our babies and whether or not we would do that or not for him. It suddenly occurred to me that I could dedicate him to this earth right then and there in our own little bath-time ceremony. I closed my eyes and said this prayer 3 times (I say all my prayers three times): “With all my heart and mind, I dedicate Timothy George Hamilton to this world and to this human experience.” Then I took a moment to dedicate myself to the sacred task of mothering Timothy and my other three sons. Finally, I handed over that task to the God in which I believe. All of this, I consider meditation.

My 4 children not only challenge me to dig deep within myself to find untapped resources for patience, perseverance and selflessness, but they also open up my life to a level of unconditional love that I believe is found nowhere else in the human experience. By including children into the overall landscape of my life, I am asked not in words, but through their precious vulnerability and trust in me, to expand in all areas of love, compassion and responsibility for resolving the areas of my inner psyche where I have the potential to cause harm. It is through and because of my 4 children that I strive to make a more peaceful and harmonious world. While I understand that it is not every woman’s path to become a mother, it is still the mothers of this world who shoulder the responsibility for creating a future generation of adult men and women capable of healing this planet and righting the wrongs of the past. I believe there is nothing more sacred than lifting my children’s hearts up to the truth of their value on this earth. We are all worthy of being here and have something to contribute to the good of all. The extent to which they know this will be a direct reflection of the extent to which I am aware of this truth. As a mother, I carry a double edged sword of being both responsible for my own continued personal and spiritual development, and having primary charge for the emotional, physical and psychological development of 4 young children. It can feel a daunting and insurmountable task, one for which our culture strives to address with only limited and varying degrees of success. There is no mother who at one time or another did not feel completely overwhelmed by the enormity of her mission. And yet, I believe there is no other course available to me with potential for greater rewards. Seeing my children grow into adults is a privilege not to be taken lightly.  I have a say in shaping adults I can both respect and admire. The path of motherhood tends two inner fires – my own inner flame and the budding fires of these 4 souls. Every aspect of my role as mother has greater, further-reaching, implications than merely seeing my children to respectable jobs as adults. I ignore and downplay this fact to my peril. I believe it is time that motherhood is acknowledged for what it is – an inner journey for women leading to ever increasing levels of personal responsibility for all. My dictionary defines sacred as, “entitled to veneration by association with divinity or divine things.” I believe that taking new life and nurturing it to full bloom is a divine thing. I believe there is no path more sacred than motherhood.

During those years of our lives we call “motherhood,” the act of surrender begins from the very moment of conception. Whether or not we have been able to naturally conceive, nature chronicles a list of events over which our minds have little or no control. What we want and what we receive are not always the same. Take my current pregnancy, for example.

Like any responsible married couple, my husband and I have always taken family planning seriously. I started out our marriage on the pill until we felt ready to enter the world of parenting. Then I had our first child (a son) and went back on birth control until we were ready for the next one. That did not turn out to be so easy. Almost 3 years and a miscarriage later, we finally did have that second baby (another son). Next there came an impromptu pregnancy that really did not fit into the “responsible parenting” category. We played with fire and our third son is the outcome. He’s cute and we love him, but we thought, “Three really is a lot. Let’s stop while we are ahead.”

Enter the vasectomy. My husband very willingly had this procedure to keep the number of children to three. Two years later, I was wondering why I seemed to be gaining weight when I was jogging every day and eating a very healthy diet. The lack of menstrual cycles had an excuse in the fact that I was still breastfeeding our 2 year old. The sore nipples were chalked down to his teeth. My head was buried deeply in the sand until I started feeling the butterfly movements of a fetus.

Why is it that I am pregnant again with a fourth child (another son) when some women are unable to conceive even once? The physical reasons for this do not diminish the fact that in birth and parenting, life can seem awfully unfair. The act of surrender reveals itself to be the only alternative when faced with circumstances that are not of our conscious choosing. I have had to surrender my feelings about having a fourth child, my career as an author and radio show host and many other ideas onto which I clung about my family and life.

Letting go of what we “wanted” to embrace what is, is an art. It takes practice. It takes time. Over the last 2 months, I have learned to surrender this pregnancy, this new baby, this unexpected new direction in our family life and so much more because, quite frankly, I really did not have another choice. This baby wants to be here. It chose us for his parents and it kept really quiet until there was no turning back. Other options like surrogacy and adoption do not feel like choices. It is our baby and we will welcome him into the fold.

What occurs for each of us will be unique to the individual circumstances of our lives. However, to surrender all that we are unable to control or manipulate is a universal movement for which we can support and embrace. I cannot explain into fairness why I am “blessed” with a child that was not planned (in fact, was proactively planned against!) and another woman is unable to have even one child. What I can do is ask friends and family to understand my feelings of reservation and spend a certain amount of time each day in quiet meditation to emotionally let go of all my previous expectations so that there is room for what is really happening.

Surrender allows us to be grateful for the things happening in our life, no matter how unfair it may seem on the surface. It is all a learning experience. This pregnancy is teaching me the art of surrender. With an effort that follows conscious realization that there are things over which I am powerless, I can let go of previously adopted notions about who and what I am “supposed” to be in this world and, instead, embrace the me that is here right now writing these words.

I am big. I am overwhelmed at the thought of having another baby. I am scared. I am also incredibly fortunate to have a husband who loves me, 3 beautiful sons who will adore their new baby brother and an extended network of family and friends upon whom I can rely during the intervening years of parenting a house of testosterone! It is what it is. Surrender has, by necessity, become an art at which I am gratefully adept.