Tag: motherhood

Seasons

Published on by Sophia Lee1 Comment

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.

A baby’s cry

Published on by Sophia LeeLeave a comment

I was about six or seven years old. School had ended, and I was on the school bus, on my way back home. I don’t remember exactly what I was thinking, but I remember I was quiet, withdrawn from the chatter in the bus. I had not been feeling well that day at all, but I didn’t really know that I was feeling sick, nor did I tell anyone that I felt unwell.

The school bus dropped me off. As I walked towards home, I spotted both my parents standing in front of the door, waiting for me. Their faces lit up when they saw me, and they opened their arms with bright smiles. I don’t remember what they said. All I remember is their smiles– the warmth, the love, the familiarity. I was home. I was safe. And all of a sudden, I burst into tears. And as my parents opened their mouths in alarm, as they ran forward to hug me and ask me what’s wrong, I realized then that I needed their presence to finally feel safe to cry, to express in my childlike way that I am not well.

For some reason, this memory came to me as I sat at the waiting room for my optometrist. I was running out of contact lenses and needed a new prescription to renew them. Before the appointment, I had managed to put Tov down for a nap, and I had expected to be back within an hour, but the optometrist was late for my appointment– very late. I had to wait 45 minutes to finally see the optometrist. While waiting, I checked the nursery camera on my iPhone– oh no. Tov is up! He’s wiggling and wailing in his crib!

So there I was, waiting for the optometrist, while David was downstairs in his office stuck in a meeting, and Tov was just crying and crying with nobody to respond to him. My gosh, how that wrung my heart! I wanted to scream at the optometrist for making me wait for that long, jump into my car, zoom back home, and scoop Tov into my arms.

I used to hate the sound of babies crying. I found them as annoying as the sound of forks scraping the surface of a dish. Whenever I heard a baby wailing at the store, or on the plane, I felt my ears bleeding from the noises raking at my eardrums. But something incredible happened when my own baby cried– my heart swelled. My love for him doubled, tripled whenever he cried. It’s not like my baby’s wails are any less loud or shrill than other babies’. It’s just that…he’s my baby, and he needs me.

Often Tov cries for no apparent reason at all, other than simply reminding us that he exists. He’s been fed, burped, changed, played with, cuddled with, and he will still let out a cry, just because he can…and just because he knows we will respond, even if it’s in the middle of the night. Because as young and helpless as he is, he knows the power of his cries in the ears of his parents. He knows. Just as the seven-year-old me subconsciously withheld my tears until I saw my parents, because I knew nobody would respond as warmly and lovingly as my own parents could, two-month-old Tov intuitively knows that when he cries, my heart instantly wrings and swells.

I think about how God called David a man after his own heart. That is one of the most tremendous statements in the Bible, that God, who hates unrighteousness and injustice, would call David– a murderer, an adulterer, a rapist, and a failed father– a man after his own heart. But as I read the songs that David composed in Psalms, I wonder…perhaps God calling David a man after his own heart isn’t based on David’s qualifications, but on David’s ability to cry and wail to God with full confidence and assurance that God listens and responds. God called David a man after his own heart because David understood the heart of God– that His is a heart that wrings and swells when we cry out to Him. Calling David a man after God’s own heart isn’t a testament to David– it’s a testament to God– to His goodness and compassion and steadfast love. It is a praise to God, not David.

Just read out Psalm 62, in which David wrote: “Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”

And Psalm 42, one of my favorite passages: “These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go to the house of God under the protection of the Mighty One with shouts of joy and praise among the festive throng. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”

What I sense in these psalms is that David knew deep into his marrows that he is beloved by God. So when he is downcast, he pours out his soul to God. When he is happy, he pours out his soul to God. To pour out your soul is to be fully vulnerable and authentic, to reveal every part of yourself, to express every emotion and thoughts, to be boldly free and naked before someone without shame, regrets, or fear.

I love that. God, I love that. Even as an infant, we are born wailing needing so much love, more love than even our parents can ever satisfy, more love than we as parents can ever provide. We were born to be loved, because God created us out of love, and anyone who understands that is a person after his own heart.

I write this as my son is snug and secure in a wrap around me. These days, he refuses to nap unless he’s literally stuck skin-to-skin to me. I’ve tried multiple times to lay him in his crib, but each time, he spits out his pacifier, wiggles and squirms in his swaddle like a little Houdini, and yeowls like a wet cat until I pick him up and hold him close to me.

So I hold him tight. Even though it’s inconvenient, there’s also a part of me that delights that he cries for me, that he knows he’s safe with me. So I lay his little head on top of my beating heart, a heart that keeps growing in love for him by the day. He settles down, closes his teary eyes, and rests in peace. I kiss the top of his head, breathe in that newborn fragrance, and think, “If I can love my son this much, how much more my God, my creator?” And so my soul pours out to God– with praise, thanksgiving, joy, love– for I am beloved by the one who is love.

Grandparents come to visit

Published on by Sophia Lee1 Comment

My parents flew from Virginia to Los Angeles to meet Tov in late May.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m an extremely independent person. I think I wear my independence like an envelope– it’s how I present and package myself. I like being independent, and I like being known as independent. So I assumed a lot of things about what postpartum will be like for me– I assumed I wouldn’t want any visitors at the hospital, no visitors at home, no advice or gifts or meals, just everyone, please leave me alone to figure this parenting thing out on my own. That included my parents: I assumed I wouldn’t really need them that much.

I assumed wrong. The day we got discharged, as a hospital escort wheeled me out to the parking lot, she exclaimed, “You guys just seem so chill! Most of the other parents I’ve escorted always look so terrified and anxious. But you guys don’t look anxious at all!”

That wasn’t true. There were plenty to be anxious about; we just didn’t show it, because everything had happened so fast, so soon, that we were suffering from whiplash and had no mental space to even feel anxiety. Right before we were discharged, the pediatrician told us Tov showed concerningly elevated levels of jaundice, and recommended we take him to the ER the next morning for another blood test. That day, Tov was so drugged out from his circumcision that he could barely sip 10 ml of milk, even though it had been more than four hours since his last feeding, and the lactation consultant had told me he really should be drinking at least 40 ml every two to three hours. The kid was so tiny at less than 5 lbs, fresh out of the NICU, looking a little orangey-yellow in the face, and he was coming home alone with clueless parents who didn’t even know how to buckle him into the car seat, how to burp or swaddle him. I wanted to borrow a couple nurses and take them home with me, because I had questions about questions I didn’t know. When we got home and parked the car in the garage, David and I looked at Tov and then at each other: OK. What now?

That was when I really, really wanted my abba and omma. It wasn’t even about asking them for help with the baby. I just wanted their presence, to feel safe and secure at a time when I suddenly had to provide safety and security to a fragile child of my own.

My parents arrived late at night on a Monday, while Tov was sleeping soundly. David picked them up at the airport and brought them home to meet Tov. Concerned about bringing germs and viruses, parents had said they would keep their N-95 masks on and just look at the baby in the crib. But once they saw Tov sleeping, at times puckering his lips and wrinkling his little forehead, they simply couldn’t help themselves– they gasped; they laughed in wonder; their hands naturally reached out to stroke his cheeks, his hair, his little bundled body.

And I didn’t care at all. I wanted them to touch my son, to embrace and kiss him, because I wanted Tov to receive all the love I’ve always received from my parents from birth till now. Because Tov needs his grandparents’ love. And because a mother also needs her mother.

The next morning, my parents came to our house with three huge boxes full of ingredients they had bought from the Korean market. They bought so much stuff that my fridge could barely stay shut.

Only parents would eagerly fly across the country to physically labor in their grown-up children’s house. I may be almost 35, but in my parents’ eyes, I need as much care and nurturing as Tov. As soon as they walked into the house, my mother was already tying an apron around her waist. Every day, all day she pottered around the kitchen, soaking and stir-frying seaweed for seaweed soup, marinating sesame seed leaves and cucumbers for kimchi, brewing dates for date tea, stewing pork ribs with spices for bak kut teh– all “warm” foods that’s supposed to help me recover postpartum. My father helped mince onions and garlic, vacuumed the whole house, watered and pruned all the plants in the house. Every evening before dinner, he prepared a devotion and prayed earnestly for 15 minutes while the food my mother prepared turned cold.

My parents came to our home with hearts full of love and arms full of blessings. And yes, they also came with fistfuls of unsolicited advice. Like all Asian parents, they were obsessed with avoiding anything cold.

“Aigo! Aren’t your feet cold?” omma exclaimed when she saw my bare feet.

“I just showered and didn’t have time to put on socks,” I said.

“Aigo!” abba exclaimed when he saw my feet: “You should put on some socks!”

“I will, soon!”

A few minutes later, omma: “Ommoh, it’s so chilly in this house! Hurry. Better put on some socks!” (It was 72 degrees inside.)

A minute later, abba: “Are you going to put on socks?”

Me: “Oh my God! I already said I will!”

This obsession with keeping the body warm went on the entire time they were with us. Just as they worried about my cold feet, they worried about Tov being cold. They closed the window when we opened it. They closed it again when we opened it again. Any time there was a slight breeze wafting into the house, they slammed the windows shut. They insisted on wrapping Tov in a blanket, even though we told them he easily overheats. They snuck an extra blanket over him when we weren’t looking. They exclaimed, “Aigo, I think he’s cold!” every time Tov sneezed, or grunted, or wailed, or fidgeted. My mother herself wore two layers of pants and woolly socks all day. And they both completely freaked out when they found out we fed Tov breastmilk straight from the fridge.

“Shocking!” abba muttered, wrapping his arms extra-tight around his grandson as though to protect him from any future cold beverages: “Unthinkable! We could never imagine ever feeding a baby cold milk!”

I expected all this to happen. I expected myself to get annoyed, and I did. Yet I also enjoyed every moment with them, because even their unsolicited advice and nagging were, in a way, loud proclamations of their love.

Abba left earlier on Saturday to preach on Sunday, while omma stayed an extra week with us. Every single day, any time he could, abba held Tov in his arms. When Tov made a noise in his crib, abba would zoom right over and scoop him up. He’d plop Tov (bundled in extra blankets, of course) on his round belly and just stare at him for hours while munching on glutinous corn on a chopstick, praying silently, or sometimes dozing off himself. Tov never napped as well as he did in his grandpa’s arms. He just melted right into his grandpa’s warm embrace, sleeping without stirring for three hours.

My omma, too, loved watching Tov. When the boy was especially fussy during the evenings, omma would prop him on her lap and sing to him– fun, silly Korean lullabies about fat papa bears and playful mountain rabbits, and the classic “Jesus loves me” hymn. Sometimes, she sang her own prayers for Tov in Korean and Mandarin to the tune of “Jesus loves me.” As she sang, “God, raise this child to be like his name, that he would enjoy your tov, and be tov and blessing to all!” Tov stopped fussing and just stared at his grandma with wide, bright eyes.

Oh, how full my heart was during those moments! Tov felt like the biggest gift I could give my parents– the joy of holding and loving the child of their child, the fresh marvel and joy of being grandparents. How powerful is this parental love, that it keeps flowing down from generation to generation without losing its purity and radiance. I want Tov to soak up all his grandparents’ love, all the way to his marrows. I want my parents’ prayers for Tov to move the hearts of every angel in heaven to keep and protect him from evil and brokenness. I want Tov to remember the scent and warmth from his grandparents, even if he won’t yet remember their faces and snuggles and coos. Few other things warm a mother’s heart like seeing her child be loved by others.

The day I dropped omma off at the airport, I felt a deep loss. David too said he felt weirdly sad saying goodbye to my parents. It wasn’t just about the convenience of having two extra pair of hands in the house. It was the security and comfort of having our own parents with us, like the coziness of a weighted blanket on a cold winter night, because every parent needs their parents, whether they’re five weeks old or 50. While taking care of my child, I– this proud, stubbornly independent, grown-ass woman– ached to also be cared for by my own parents, to once again be somebody else’s baby.

When we become parents, we see our own parents with new eyes. While my parents were here, abba and I talked about the way my brother and I were raised. I have my own minor grievances about the way I was raised, and I shared some of the instances when I felt my parents had wronged me, or misunderstood me.

Before Tov, some of those grievances still felt a little sore. But I was surprised to discover that the rawness of those childhood memories had faded away. Instead, new healthy skin had formed over that wound– the skin of empathy and compassion for my parents who were once in the same position as me: clueless, fumbling, clumsy, and fallen, but doing the best they can with the best love I could ever receive from a flawed human here on earth. Nobody loved me as fiercely and brokenly as my parents– and nobody loved me as well as they did.

My parents were raised very differently in a very different culture, and that generational and cultural gap will always be there between us, but this new unity of parenthood has unfolded a bridge between our two worlds.

Tov is five weeks old today. He’s chubbier and slowly growing out of his hospital blanket. His needs are more urgent, at least from the way he expresses it. At times, when his needs are not immediately met– (really, because this boy cannot speak! He just scrunches his face and wails! How is a mother to know if he can’t speak his mind. Speak, boy, speak!)– he gets particularly agitated, his hands clenched into little golf ball-sized fists, his legs kicking, his face all wrinkly and red.

It doesn’t matter to him that I’m holding him in my arms, showering him with kisses, showing him in every way possible that I love him. It doesn’t matter to him that I’m exhausted, that I haven’t had more than two hours of uninterrupted sleep for five weeks, that I lost the thing that was most important to me– my freedom– to him. He doesn’t appreciate this love, not yet– he just takes and takes as though receiving love is the most natural and expected thing in the world. Right now, he’s still very young, but one day, I’ll disappoint him even more. I’ll snap at him, dismiss his feelings, misunderstand him, force things on him– all the things parents do when they’re busy or selfish or tired or anxious, or simply loving their kids as best as they can with all their shortcomings.

Perhaps, one clear indication of maturity is when the child can look at all the mistakes of her parents, and respond with compassion and empathy. I hope one day Tov will do that for me– and if I’m lucky, I won’t have to wait till he has a child of his own.