Maternity Pants

I feel like life is sometimes like the maternity pants you still have to wear after the baby is born.  Those of you who haven't walked through this particular phase in life with a friend, partner, or yourself may find the following analogy hard to follow, but for the rest, bear with me.  Maternity pants are familiar because you've been wearing them for months.  Comfortable.  Broken-in.  Stretchy.  Necessary.  Temporal.  Depressingly utilitarian.  Reminders that nothing just snaps back into place... some things just take time.

I call maternity pants 'training pants.'  Like those pants you buy for a toddler who is learning to use the toilet.  No fuss.  No frills.  No extras, like buttons or zippers, that require any more than the absolute bare necessity.  Nothing that will take more energy, nothing that will take more time.  Up.  Down.  Up again.  That's it.

When I was pregnant with Em, I was warned that I'd still need maternity pants after her birth.  I thought I was prepared to put those elastic-wasted bad boys back on, to still be big and awkward and not exactly myself, but the reality of this situation, that only the most basic of things were within my abilities, hit me square between my eyes.  It brought me to my knees.  I was so angry.  I was angry that the next phase hadn't started.  Angry that I wasn't "ME" instantly.  Angry... at what?  The process maybe?

And that's what maternity pants embody:  the process.  The process of growing a baby and then the process of finding a new normal after a baby is born.  I knew I needed those pants.  I knew my favorite pre-pregnancy GAP jeans would be more than I could handle.  My body, and my mind really, were in a new space.  One I'd never been in before. I was exhausted and frankly, a zipper might have been my proverbial last straw, but I so desperately wanted the process of becoming a mother to be over. I had changed, but not enough for new Big Mama pants, and so I was stuck with the training pants... for just a bit longer.

I'm in a strange space right now.  A space that is embodied by my training pants.  No I'm not still wearing any, not because I wouldn't fit in them but because I'm terrified that if I keep them, I'll get pregnant again.  I hated wearing my training pants after a kid is born because they make me feel big and frumpy and shapeless.  That said, I love having my new baby with me.  I love the comfy flexibility and easiness of those pants.  They fit a bit big.  They stretch, so I don't have to worry about busting out of the seams.  That dumb elastic waistband grew and stretched to accommodate the growth of lungs, finger nails, eyes, ears, the cutest little noses ever formed, and was now needed to accommodate both the physical and emotional aftermath now that Little Leslie had joined the world.

My life has stretched, expanded and accommodated the formation of new friendships, new cultures, new realities, new ways of processing the world.  It's been wonderful and beautiful and so special in a stretch-marked-and-swollen-ankles kind of way.  But now... I feel like life is just like my pants, ill-fitting because the process hasn't been completed yet.  My life was stretched to encircle so many things but now I feel like my heart is almost able to stand alone, no longer needing the constant, formative nurturing it did when I found myself here five years ago.

I realize that maternity clothes, like everything, are only for a season.  This too shall pass and all those other cliche phrases that actually turn out to be relatively true.  I'm a growing mama.  I've stretch my wings in ways I NEVER thought humanly possible for me.  I'm finding my mama bear roar and that is a massive deal for me.  I'm determined to be present, even if the space, like my maternity pants, is ill-fitting and slightly odd and totally about moving from one point to another.  I'm determined to embrace each step of the journey that God is leading me on, even if it is with a massive pout on my face.

There are times in life when we want to pray for something to be over.  For the process to be finished or at the very least, moved along at a faster clip.  I'm not generally one of those people.  I'm the one who busts out the gumboots (rubber boots) in the rain, who digs out the chunky, cable-knit sweater in the cold, and who relishes the snowstorm for the candles and massive down comforter.  I'm a total journey kind of girl.

So this space, this place of funk and strangeness and transition between something and something else, whatever those two may be, is the same for me.  I'm not enjoying the rawness, the tugs on my heart strings, the uncertainty, the fear, the feeling of loss and mourning.  But I serve a God who saw me through the transitions that GOT me to this place of messy perfection.  A God who sorted out friendships that have nurtured and ministered to my heart, my soul, and most importantly, have been the most beautiful Face of Christ I could imagine.  He sorted out friends and organizations and help and support, right to the last detail in moments of brokenness and desperation.  Why would I ever doubt the process that has proved true time and time again in my life?  He sorted the friend who started the MOPS that led to so much richness and understanding.  He sorted the roommate in college who was the perfect cure for homesickness, neediness, and insecurity.  He sorted the pastor who connected me to the group of women who saw something in a ridiculously inexperienced and particularly annoying newlywed girl that needed to be invested in, and in that showed me how to live faith.  He sorted surrogate family who stuck with the most awkward college freshmen ever planted in Central Illinois, to see me through graduation, dating, marrying, having babies, leaving my country of birth, and continue to be a sanctuary in the storm.  I have the back story for each, and each was years and years in the making to get all the right players to just the right place for check-mate at that particular moment of serendipity in my life.

So here I stand, in a life that feels like maternity pants, and I'm struggling with so many things, but in my marrow I know that this too, like my maternity pants, will pass.  There's a BBC show I love and at the end of one of the episodes, the narrator says, "Faith, like hope, is a rope and anchor in a shifting world.  Faith cannot be questioned, only lived.  It's heartbeat is love."  I love that.  I get that.  I'm living that because one day, without realizing, I will no longer need these training pants I'm wearing.  The process will be over somewhere between one load of laundry and the next, somewhere between one coffee date with a friend and school-pick up.  But for now, bring on the elastic because this mama isn't quiet ready for the Big Girl pants just yet cause Jesus is doing something, and I'll wear these pants, and live in this processing space until He decides its time to move on.