I Think the Baby Broke My Wife

“I think she’s broken. I think the baby broke my wife and I’d like you to fix her.”

That’s what a husband of newborn babies said to the doctor on the “This is Us” tv show I saw on an airplane on our trip to Florida last winter. I remember wondering just how many husbands have thought those same words but never voiced them aloud. Baby’s change us.  And it’s not a slow change but an instant one that can leave a husband wondering, what happened to my wife? The calm, decisive, always-knew-what-she-wanted woman that he married is now the one who just spent twenty minutes selecting a diaper cream, and tears came at 10 minutes with a “this shouldn’t be this hard!” temper tantrum to follow. Yoga pants and tshirts become daily attire even for the woman who "always" dressed up, and happy and upbeat personalities become worrisome and exhausted.

But below the surface changes of motherhood, there was a deeper brokenness this man was talking about, because one of their three babies had died. It was that baby that had really broken his wife. It was that one who had taken the light from her eyes and drained the love from her heart. It was then that she became just a shell of a person, who looked fairly normal to the outward person but felt so empty inside.

I remember feeling this way in our early years of marriage during the loss of our first children. With every loss I was more and more broken. I remember realizing one day the broken state I was in, and wondering if I would ever again be the person I used to be. I knew the answer was “No.” I could never go back there even though I wanted to desperately.  These children, losing them, had changed me forever.

But there was a time I saw that light did come back into my eyes. That I would never be the same person I used to be, but different didn’t have to mean worse. There was a long time that I felt healed, that I know the Holy Spirit filled in those gaps and actually left me better than before.

And then last year something changed. I didn’t see it right away, I knew I was sad and hurting, and I knew I never got over it, but I didn’t realize just how badly I had been broken by saying goodbye to M. I didn’t see it until she came back to visit and we were a whole family again. I didn’t realize how hard my heart was until she was here and I was able to love so well. I didn’t know I was angry about it until a friend pointed it out.

The problem is that I wanted God to fix the situation and to fix me. But I was thinking about that man’s words to the doctor, and what my response would have been to him or what it would be to any new parents: “Don’t worry, this is not what has broken her, it’s actually what is fixing her.” It refines us, molds us, bends us, stretches us. Motherhood completely changes us, and it’s a good thing. It doesn’t seem so good at first as we stumble along trying to get the hang of it, hormones taking us on a ride. But motherhood is the ultimate cure for selfishness. It’s the end of pride and the beginning of humility. Its life’s greatest teacher in putting another before ourselves and trusting God with the million things we cannot control.  It’s just shocking for us because most of us didn’t realize we were so broken to begin with, so it’s hard to understand when God takes the chisel of motherhood and starts fixing. We pull away, we try to run from it, it seems to be wrecking the beautiful work of art that we believe we are. Except the sculptor knows what He's doing. He sees our beautiful potential and he knows just how to bring it out. But it's probably going to hurt a little.

So if those words echo in my heart, that means that this too, this desert I have walked for the last year, this pain of missing her and worrying about her, is really not breaking me but fixing me. It means there is some serious repair needed in my heart and this is the circumstance He’s using to do it.

It's not the way I would have chosen, but I trust that this is exactly the chisel He knows that I need.

Don't worry, you're not broken dear....you're just a work in progress....aren't we all?

Prayers for you today as you trust Him in the hardest times. After all, faith and trust when we don't see or understand is the most beautiful faith of all.