August 2022 – Writing for Sophia

I have a love/hate relationship with those developmental milestone charts.

On the one hand, they’re helpful in keeping track with your baby’s developmental progress. You know what to anticipate so you don’t get freaked out when the baby suddenly regresses on sleep, for example, or don’t think your baby’s hungry every time he sucks on his fingers. On the other hand, when your baby is developmentally behind, like mine is, those charts get rather annoying.

One milestone I had been eagerly awaiting, ever since we brought him home from the hospital, is Tov’s first genuine smile. He’s been “smiling” since he was a newborn, but those little smirks were not genuine smiles, but baby reflexes, almost always while he’s asleep, or when I touch his cheek. So as cute as those smirks were, they weren’t all that special. I couldn’t wait to see Tov smile for real– for him to look me in the eyes, and then intentionally stretch his mouth upwards into a smile, just for me.

According to those charts, a baby’s first social smile happens around eight weeks, or between six and 12 weeks. Well, six weeks passed. Then eight. Then 10. Twelve weeks. And Tov still wasn’t really smiling. There would be little flickers of sorta kinda smiles, but those smiles were gone in an instant, making me think they weren’t really smiles but random muscle reflexes. Plus, he wasn’t even looking at me when he “smiled.” So I continued to wait. And wait. And wait. Three months. 13 weeks. 14 weeks. No smile.

The pediatrician had told me that because Tov is a premie, he might be a little behind. He might take a year to catch up to the median weight. I was fine with him being a little small– I now understand why so many parents mourn that their kids are growing up too fast. I love Tov being small. It’s good for both my back and my soul that I can still cradle him in one arm. But damn it, I really wanted him to smile soon!

So I tried to hurry his progress along. I looked him in the eye and talked to him, in both Korean and English. He mostly looked away. Stared at the ceiling fan, the wall, the sofa, everything except my eyes. I sat him on his bouncer and read to him. I read him a children’s bible, but he yawned, that little heathen. So I read him a book about choo choo trains, using sound effects and everything, and he seemed a little bit more interested and looked at the book for a few seconds, but didn’t smile, didn’t last more than five seconds before reverting his gaze back to the ceiling fan.

Desperation calls for self-humiliation. I sang. I danced. I sang about hopping rabbits while hopping on all fours. I sang “Jesus loves me” and made hand motions by crossing my fingers and making finger hearts. I sang nonsense– “boop boop boop, la la la, kkaa reeee reeee reee!”– while swaying my hips and flapping my arms like a mad monkey.

All the while, my child looked bored and even…judgmental. This was his expression as his mother sang and danced and made a fool of herself just for the sake of a smile:

That little brat. That little judgy brat. Fine. You don’t want to smile? No smile for you!

But…I can’t help it. I look at that face and my mouth naturally smiles. My mouth naturally wants to kiss him all over. My adoration for him just burbles and froths like a soda fountain, and my child just sips at it, because he is saturated to the tip of his hair strands with his mother’s love, and he doesn’t even know what life is like without it.

Not even four months into motherhood, and I am taken for granted. Woe is me.

Then one evening, we went to a party. It was David’s cousin’s 50th birthday, and they invited us to their house for a birthday dinner. It was the first large gathering we attended altogether since Tov was born. I dressed him up in his cutest outfit, but he pooped all over it– twice– so I changed him into his second nicest outfit. No matter– at least in my eyes, he can wear a poop-stained farty sack and still be the most adorable living creature on earth. I was grateful that others also found him lovable, and Tov received so much love at the party. Aunts and cousins held him, cooed over him, bounced him, cuddled him.

And guess what. That boy SMILED. Not once, not twice, but many times! He smiled and smiled! At other people— while his mother, the woman who carried him in her womb for 35 weeks, who suffered all the aches and indignities and agony of pregnancy and labor, whose shirts are permanently stained with milk, who has aged 10 years and frightens herself every time she looks in the mirror– that mother who sacrificed so much for this child! She! That mother! She sat right next to him watching her baby smile at literally everyone except her.

Oh that little…

Then the next morning. Guess who he smiled at?

Oh no. Not me. Not his poor pitiful mother. He smiled at his father. David was sitting him on his lap, when Tov peered into his eyes and presented him with a wide smile.

“He’s smiling!” David exclaimed.

“What!” I yelped from the kitchen, and rushed over. Tov took one look at me and stopped smiling.

I went back to the kitchen.

“He’s smiling again!” David shouted.

“Oh my God!” I rushed back, and Tov stared at me with no smile.

I did finally see him smile for myself. Why? Because I hid behind the house plants while Tov smiled at my delighted husband. Why are babies such jerks?

I knew that to Tov, he and I are one. He spends more time skin-on-skin on me than with anyone else, and he’s still too young to separate his identity from mine. So I wasn’t hurt. Just majorly annoyed, that’s all. Just like I’ll be majorly annoyed if he says “abba” before “omma” and David is certain to gloat about it.

The next morning, I was nursing Tov while looking at his darling round-cheeked face, when I thought, “Why not pray about this?” It just seemed like such a trivial silly prayer request. But the Bible did say “in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” In every situation, the Bible says. Not just with serious critical situations, the Bible implies.

OK then. So that morning, I prayed, feeling a little silly, “God, let Tov give me one smile, just for me!”

Tov finished feeding. I burped him. Sat him on my lap facing me. Talked nonsense to him. He stared at me. Then, to my great amazement, he SMILED! Not just a little side smirk, but a full-on eye-crinkle smile!

I almost fell off my chair. “Oh my God! Tov! Did you just smile at omma?” I exclaimed.

And then…he smiled AGAIN! A wide mouth grin! A smile so pure, so guileless, so rich and sweet! All the while looking at ME! Not at the aunties, not at my husband, not the ceiling fan, but at ME! I was so thrilled I smothered him with kisses, to which he responded by turning his head with a grimace. We’ll work on that (or I should probably get used to it), but HALLELUJAH praise the Lord! My child smiled at me!

Since then, Tov has been smiling more and more, and although I’ve collected dozens of smiles by now, every smile is still a heavenly gift, like a kiss from an angel. I waited exactly 100 days for Tov’s smile, and the wait was worth every ridiculous dance, nerve-scratching baby voices, and reading the same boring choo-choo train book over and over.

It’s interesting, that a human being is born crying from the womb, but it takes weeks for the child to learn how to smile. Tov knew how to cry from the moment he arrived, but he needed another human being to learn how to smile, and even then, it can take some coaxing, with lots of eye-to-eye interaction and communication.

I think a lot about the Lord’s joy in us as I experience a parent’s joy over her child’s joy, and how that joy is so interpersonal and communal. I’ve always loved that verse in Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”

What a tender, joyful way of expressing the Lord’s heart towards us! Just like I sit Tov on my lap and sing to him, joy burbling as I sense his own joy, smiling a hundred times more at the sight of his one smile, the Lord rejoices over us with gladness and loud singing. We need His joy to learn joy, we share that joy with one another, and we need each other to express that joy.

The first time I was hospitalized, I was 17, a soon-to-graduate high school senior. I was struggling with anorexia but refusing to admit it. I weighed barely a few pebbles above 60 pounds, and my parents and I had just signed the papers to discharge from the hospital against doctor’s orders.

My family and I walked out of the hospital that late afternoon to meet a golden sun, but inwardly, our souls were quivering under a hailstorm. It’s hard to imagine how my parents were feeling at the time. I know how I was feeling, though. I faced the situation with willfully blind eyes– pretending I didn’t really have a problem (“Oh well, I just need to eat a bit more, that’s all!”); pretending I wasn’t terrified of my future, which seemed so dark and exhausting; pretending I had more willpower and courage than I truly had. We left the hospital with forced smiles but dank eyes. And as we walked out of the hospital doors, my abba remarked, “The only people leaving this hospital happy are mothers with their newborn child.”

For some reason, that comment stayed with me all these years. Perhaps it was because I was so depressed that day, that I couldn’t fathom the joy of a mother bringing home a new baby, and the juxtaposition was so jarring, so unimaginable, that it stuck.

So the day I was discharged from the hospital holding Tov in my arms, as morbid as it sounds, I thought of abba’s remark, and thought of how the situation had flipped: Now I was the one leaving the hospital with joy, while in the same hospital, some other family was leaving it with dread and sorrow. How unpredictable life is– yet how seasonal it is as well. Like Ecclesiastes reminds us, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”

I can currently in a season of mundaneness. Every day is the same– slow, boring, mind-numbing, yet gone in a blink. What day is it today again? Oh yes, Monday. Same as Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday, and Friday. Each day I wake up to repeat the same manual labors of motherhood: make coffee while Tov cries for milk, feed him, change him, play with him, fruitlessly attempt to get him to nap in his crib; repeat. When friends ask me how I’m doing, I honestly don’t really know what to say. Fine? I am physically and mentally tired, but I’m not unhappy. Neither am I dancing with joy. I am alive, my husband is alive, my baby is alive. We live, therefore we are well.

Tov was particularly fussy today. He cried and yeowed and wailed and whined and really struggled to sleep. He cried on his play mat. He cried on the bouncer. He cried in my arms. I eventually managed to calm him down into a cat nap by wearing him and singing to him.

I don’t know why, but as I swayed him to sleep, I sang to him a song that I used to sing daily to myself when I was a single 29-year-old living alone in a studio apartment with a cat. It’s called “Satisfied in You” by The Sing Team, a hymn rendition of Psalm 42. Here’s the music video version of it:

I remember when I listened to this song on repeat each day, sometimes singing it to myself, sometimes humming it in my head. Here are the lyrics:

I have lost my appetite
And a flood is welling up behind my eyes
So I eat the tears I cry
And if that were not enough
They know just the words to cut and tear and prod
When they ask me “Where’s your God?”

Why are you downcast, oh my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
I can remember when you showed your face to me

As a deer pants for water, so my soul thirsts for you
And when I behold Your glory, You so faithfully renew
Like a bed of rest for my fainting flesh
I am satisfied in You

When I’m staring at the ground
It’s an inbred feedback loop that brings me down
So it’s time to lift my brow
And remember better days
When I loved to worship You and learn Your ways
With the sweetest songs of praise

Why are you downcast, oh my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
I can remember when you showed your grace to me

As a deer pants for water, so my soul thirsts for You
And when I survey Your splendor, You so faithfully renew
Like a bed of rest for my painting flesh
I am satisfied in You

Let my sighs give way to songs that sing about your faithfulness
Let my pain reveal your glory as my only real rest
Let my losses show me all I truly have is you
‘Cause all I truly have is You

So when I’m drowning out at sea
And Your breakers and Your waves crash down on me
I’ll recall Your safety scheme
You’re the one who made the waves
And Your Son went out to suffer in my place
And to tell me that I’m safe

So why am I down?
Why so disturbed?
I am satisfied in You

I am satisfied in You
I am satisfied in You
I am satisfied in You
I am satisfied in You

It’s a strange song to sing to a wailing child whose only real suffering is when his mother makes him wait while she makes coffee or cooks dinner. It’s also a strange song to sing when I am neither downcast nor disturbed. It made perfect sense when I was 29 though, when I woke up feeling downcast and went to bed feeling lonely. At that time, I sang it because I needed to sing out the things I believe in: That God is faithful, that I am satisfied in Him, that I can rest in Him, no matter how I feel.

But today, as a 34-year-old tired mother, I sang this song once again as though I was blowing the dust off an old photo album: “Why are you downcast, oh my soul?….I can remember when You showed Your face to me. So it’s time to lift my brow and remember better days when I loved to worship You and learn Your ways with the sweetest songs of praise… I am satisfied in You. I am satisfied in You.”

“I can remember when You showed Your face to me.” “I can remember when You showed Your grace to me.” I can remember…I can remember.

I can remember the seasons of winter when I clung onto God out of desperation– those days of struggling with anorexia; then the days when I was single and lonely and sleeping more hours than was healthy; and of course the day David’s mother died and the many tearful days after that. I can remember the seasons of spring when I sang exuberant praises to God– those hopeful, wonderful, anxious days of dating and romance; of being engaged and planning a wedding; the first morning making pancakes as newlyweds; the slow-bubbling excitement and anticipation of our firstborn.

And what season am I in now? I suppose it’s like the dog days of summer, when your brain is fried from the heat and the sun’s glare is dimming your senses into a daze, when the days are slow and long and sweaty. Such are the times when it’s most difficult to remember. It’s a time when your passion and zeal for God wilt like spring flowers under the summer sun. When the Bible sits unopened, when your prayers feel dry and sterile, when you’re just going through the motions of life and faith.

Of course, there are legit reasons for feeling that spiritual lethargy. Motherhood has its sweet blooms of joy, but it’s also– at least for me– like swaying through a fog. My mind has not felt clear and crisp since…I can’t remember. My body is not my own, my time is not my own, my attention is not my own. I am constantly distracted and scattered like Tov’s things all over the living room.

So it was a jarring memory to sing “Satisfied in You” while jiggling our fussy child in my bedroom. And I remembered. Every season, whether sunny or stormy, I can remember God was present. I can remember that He was faithful. I can remember that “God has made everything beautiful in its time” as Ecclesiastes declares, and as He has demonstrated to me, time and time again.

That season when I left the hospital as an anorexic high school senior was in its own way beautiful. It watered seeds with bitter tears that bore the sweetest fruits. That season when I left the hospital holding a sleepy, two-day-old Tov was beautiful. This new human life, even with a scrunchy frowny tantrummy face, is so beautiful beyond words.

And today, drab as it seems, mundane as the hours are, tired and numb as I am, is beautiful. Today, I remember all the other seasons God walked me through, and I remember His grace and His face. So today I rest. Today, I am satisfied in Him.

Month: August 2022

A baby’s smile

Seasons