Motherhood

I'm not teaching this term. Instead, I'm being taught...by my daughter.

It's strange to see those words in print, especially since this time last year, I never thought I'd write the word "daughter" or "son" preceded by the first person possessive pronoun.

Motherhood has turned my entire world upside down and inside out. Like the vocation of teaching, it's many things I expected, many things I didn't, and both better and more difficult than I imagined it would be. I look at mothers of more than one child with awe now. They went through all of this and still had the courage to go back and do it a second, third, fifth, or eighth time.

I do understand it, though. Despite the sleep deprivation and the physical strain and the emotional toll that a new baby puts on his or her parents, I still find myself returning to the words of the psalmist: "The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy."