No, Alone I Cannot

As a new mom, now 10 weeks postpartum, I've been craving friendship. Only not the sort you find yourself needing on a whim out of vacant affirmation. I'm desiring women of all stages and phases of life to be deeply present in mine. I need my married friends with and without children as well as those who have adopted, fostered and sacrificed in ways I never have. I need to know how it is even remotely possible to manage the constant hunger, need for affection, and hygienic-demands of more than one child. This is an unresolved mystery to me now that I am racing (and often tripping) through each day to meet the needs of ONE. I need my single friends; need to remember what it is like to ache for someone else's name to attach itself to mine -- the desire to feel as though I belong within a unit out from under my parents' roof. I need the wisdom of the old and the young, the new and used hearts. How often I wish I could take back the fleeting comments I've made to women in different stages of life, of which I was utterly naive. I can recall saying to friends of mine with young children, "So what else are you doing these days?" How  ridiculous I must have sounded to them. A single friend of mine in her 30's recently told me about a conversation in which she invited another married friend of hers to a local, late night happy hour. The married friend responded with "oh how I wish I could be single again, without the responsibilities of a husband and children...Happy Hour sounds like so much fun." My single friend retorted (on the inside, of course), "Really?! Because I would trade a cheap cosmopolitan and bar fries for a husband who loved me, any day of the week." Now, as someone who married rather young and has endured her fair share of heartache, I can honestly say that there have been many happy-hours mourned. Still, the assumption on both parties (one being that marriage is the ultimate attainment for life-long satisfaction, and the other, wishing it were so and longing for women without the "chains" of that commitment to recognize their freedom) is foolishness. I think it is too easy for us to assume that the depth of our current stage is the ultimate and final plummet. Truly, do we ever "arrive" at such a maturity as to leverage us unable to accept the wisdom of those on another side - whether that be single, married, celibate, dating, parenting, adopting, laboring or attempting to conceive? I have heard the most profound wisdom from the mouths of children. Why is it that so often we conclude others (though they be a few years ahead or behind us) incapable of the same? I'm craving friendship…and wisdom; wisdom I do not have, though I am a daughter of 27 years, wife of 5 1/2, and mother of 1. I will continuously lack the wisdom God has generously (and I do think purposefully) endowed to those outside of myself. Could it be that we were created for not only relationship but discipleship?…I simply do not have what it takes. I never will. The sooner I recognize this and hold tight to the hands outstretched in my direction, the sooner I will climb the mountain before me. I have never been so aware of the fact that my portrait, my design, was not meant to stand alone.

Heartbeat like a little train, forging on, through the fray

Sometimes in the quiet I can hear it

You send me up into the night, a mother's hopeless, endless flight

of worry I can't be a better fit

And oh how little I've become for you, certain there is more to do

before I introduce you to the air

But in my dreams I see your face, your honey eyes and chubby waist 

and overcome, I linger and I stare…