Gently, We Grow

God’s Work in the Quiet, Unseen Places of Postpartum Motherhood

I fell like a carob seed to the ground,

Heavy and dormant,

Cast from the branch that bore me.

Detached and destitute.

Falling.

Down, down, down,

Ever downward.

The hard ground bore my fall.

What once made sense

Is twisted and tormented.

What once was hope

Has now become despair.

Covered by dust and rock,

I lay there on the cold soil,

Looking up at where I had been.

Such a long way to descend.

Forgotten and freezing.

How would I ever get back to where I had been?

Darkness is my cover.

My path back to truth is suppressed.

Which way is up?

I don’t remember.

The shadow is too big,

The light too far away.

This unbreakable shell is dense.

A sealed armor to block all feeling.

Just a small, dark, impenetrable bead,

Blocking all light.

And the weight is crushing…

Crushed to cracking.

Yet in the thin, fragile crevice:

A warm touch.

A ray of light.

An unyielding shell softens;

I feel pressure building inside.

An uncomfortable expanding;

My whole casing cries, “I am not ready!”

There is an unspoken limit within.

“Please let me hide in this shell of a human.”

But this mask is getting too tight.

I can’t hold all of this desperation in.

Let me push these newfound roots down into the dark.

Out of sight.

Out of mind.

The pale roots emerge as frail.

They are useless,

But they are determined.

These quiet, unseen workers

Attach to the firm foundation beneath.

What I was trying to hide has rooted me in place.

This anchor I cannot control

Has become my anchor of stability.

A small tear releases pressure.

I want to be ripped open and split in two:

Despair giving birth to something hopeful?

This hard husk is too tough to bear.

I know there is a different way;

A gentler way to be.

A softness waits in the breaking.

A breath of a moment

To let God’s love and mercy in.

Enfold me.

Not to just cover this hard chrysalis,

But to be cracked open and broken for good.

Broken to be made new with Jesus glue.

Don’t just pass over me.

Don’t let my life be a Passover.

Infiltrate and take over.

In this slow surrender, something shifts.

Light seeps through the crack I tried so hard to prevent

Not a flood.

Just a thread of warmth.

Finding its way to the center of me.

I do not rise all at once.

I do not even know how.

But the same God who rooted me in the dark

Now coaxes me upward with a gentleness

That doesn’t shame my slowness.

A tender shoot awakens,

Pale and trembling,

Lifting me toward a light I had forgotten how to trust.

I am still small.

Still emerging.

Still learning the feel of mercy on my skin.

But I am held.

I am growing.

I am becoming something new.

Not by my strength,

But because Love has taken over.

Every place I thought was unreachable

Is stripped of sin and steady in His hands.

I rise by His grace.

Behold the Lamb

Who makes all things new.

And I rest.