Learning to Love

I think being a mom, more than any other experience in my life, has taught me how to love.  Never before has there ever existed a person who demanded so much from me 24 hours a day, and whose entire life is dramatically shaped by how I respond to her.  Never before have I been asked to wake up every 2-3 hours for months and months to nurse try to sooth a person back to sleep for who knows how long.  Never before have I been in a position to honestly consider giving up all that I've been working toward - a Ph.D. and a promising career as a professor of biblical studies, leading others to Christ through teaching - for the sake of the welfare of just one person.  Never before has a little person so shaken up my life that my future simply must be reorganized in light of her.  But that is exactly what I face as a mom.  I choose over and over again - day by day and night by night, the decision of one moment to the decision of the next - to die to myself through concrete acts of self-sacrifice that this little one might live, and as I do so, I learn love.  I am coming to believe that it is the grace and wisdom of God that babies demand so much of us - or at least did so of me - right from the beginning.  Through my daughter's neediness, a neediness that persists even through moments when I am least inclined to love, I discover how much selfishness and unloveliness exists in me, and with my eyes opened and the dependence of another person standing there before me, I am finally brought to a point where I can choose to leave that old selfishness behind and take on the image of Christ.