Stretch Marks on my Heart

I was driving home my little brood from the most beautiful day at Point Defiance Zoo yesterday, with my sister Rachel with her glorious baby bump in the passenger seat, her darling and exquisite daughter Scarlet happily sardined into the van with all her crazy cousins, the sun streaming lazily in the window when I finally began to acknowledge this strange new aching...

(Pregnant goddess due in August)

It's come on kind of gradually so I've been able to bear it for the most part. But it was when we were driving along sipping lattes finally with a chance to talk at length about how overwhelmingly excited we are that our youngest sister Rosie's first baby dolly is expected so very soon! That's when I got this fresh twinge of ouch. Right... in...the ole heart...

(Auntie Liz's pipe dream of Scarlet and the whale becoming reality...)

...well maybe it was the caffeine...the intoxicating warmth of the sun during that drive, and the simultaneous view of it in my rear view mirror shining on eight angelic little dozing heads bobbing peacefully to and fro to the motion of my big van... the sound of my precious niece yawning the tune to Baby Beluga....the thought of how we'll fit one more Momma, two more babies and a double stroller into my big rig juust fine.... Anyhow, I realized then, a heart can only get so full--even of JOY--before needing to stretch again and the stretching starts to literally... hurt a little. I just didn't expect such intensity.

I guess it's like the baby belly itself. A human being needs to stretch to accomodate the girth of such new blessings. And well, sometimes the stretching aches. I remember when driving home from the hospital with our fourth child and saying to my husband how it's amazing that the human heart (capacity to love) just keeps growing. It's not like...(good heavens!) you ever get full! Young mothers in the throes of that first born ecstasy mistakenly fear they won't be able to love subsequent children in the same earth shaking way they love their first, but that is only because they have yet to meet their second, third (or fourteenth)..... before they realize how the heart, like a woman's belly, is created to grow and stretch more than she can believe it can!


I know this, and yet...I can't really comprehend this moment in time where both of my sisters are now basking with me in the gift of motherhood. I've longed for it more than I think even I myself realized.

(Little Cracker Crunchers)

I almost feel I might explode! It's a bigger feeling--a bigger joy even than I imagined it! My heart is feeling stretched to the brim and it truly aches with expectancy and joy of the coming months to the point that I can hardly bear it. My little sisters.... such beautiful amazing Mommas. I can assure you--if I make it through this May (a new niece!) without exploding into a big terrible splatter of Auntie, it'll be a sheer miracle...

(Rosie due with dolly this May!)

and if I happen to make it through August, (my new nephew!) and into next winter... Well...now I think we all know what might just happen THEN!!! And then, if Lord willing, may he then bring more heart stretchin AND belly achin on!

(Christmas of 2006 w/ my big Juliet belly)*There has been more than a little confusion as to the meaning of this blog post and if I actually meant it to also be some sort of cryptic pregnancy announcement of being due this winter. I know it's a little out of the ordinary and all (me not being pregnant)... but I can assure you that I am at this time, NOT pregnant. It is only a metaphor for the stretching of my heart as I am utterly overwhelmed with this new burst of joy and love for my little sisters and their precious babies that many people read to be an announcement. I do pray that God will bless me again when my time comes and the above picture of me pregnant refers to the fact that when I hold my newborn niece in May and my nephew in August I will certainly be wanting to get pregnant with another of my own! :) But for now... I am really just basking in my auntiness while enjoying my current children. Sorry for any confusion!