Fiercely, Jessica

A few weeks after Carter was born, I had an appointment with my primary care doctor.

I could not tell you what that appointment was for if my life depended on it.

Honestly, Carter was a newborn, and I was still on maternity leave, so I can only assume it was something that actually required medical attention. Voluntarily scheduling an appointment to take care of myself wasn’t exactly high on my priority list in that season.

But I remember the appointment.

I remember it because of something my doctor said to me.

Carter came with me that day. Of course he did. He was brand new, I was nursing, and bringing him meant I could feed him whenever he needed me.

The appointment was running behind, and while I waited in the exam room, Carter got hungry.

So I fed him.

Nothing remarkable about it.

I wasn’t making a statement. I wasn’t inconvenienced. I wasn’t even really thinking about it.

My baby was hungry, so I fed my baby.

When my doctor finally walked into the room, she saw me nursing him and stopped.

Before anything else—before why I was there, before whatever was in my chart, before the appointment officially began—she looked at me and said:

“Thank you.”

I remember being a little caught off guard.

She thanked me for taking care of my baby. For feeding him.

At the time, she had two boys of her own. I don’t remember exactly how old they were, but I remember they were older—somewhere around the age Carter is now.

And then she started talking about motherhood.

She told me one of the things she found so incredible about becoming a mom was what happened to your mind.

It was almost as if there were parts of your brain that had always existed but had been sitting dormant. Places you had never needed before. Capacity you didn’t even know you possessed.

And then they handed you a baby.

And suddenly—

everything turned on.

Things you’d never had the capacity—or any reason—to think about were suddenly yours to anticipate, remember, notice, worry about and carry.

Nobody taught you how to do it.

You just became someone’s mother, and somehow your mind made room.

I don’t remember exactly how she said all of it anymore.

I wish I did.

But I remember how it felt to hear her say it.

I was sitting there holding this tiny baby, already a mother but still figuring out what it meant to be his mother, listening to a woman whose own boys were already years ahead of mine tell me about something I had only just begun to understand.

At the time, I couldn’t possibly have understood how right she was.

I do now.

Because that tiny baby turns twelve Friday.

Her boys were somewhere around this age when she sat across from me and marveled at what motherhood had done to her brain.

Now I’m the mother with the older boy.

And suddenly I understand why that moment meant so much to her.

Looking back, I don’t think she was simply thanking me for feeding my baby.

I think she was seeing something I couldn’t see yet.

She was a mother farther down the road, looking at a mother who still had so much of the road ahead of her.

And this was only the beginning.

Feeding him when he was hungry was one of the first things my brain had learned to hold specifically for him.

Because that’s another thing nobody tells you: every child seems to find a part of your brain that didn’t exist before them.

Soon it would be feeding schedules and diaper bags, then shoe sizes and preschool forms, teachers’ names and favorite foods, permission slips and practices, grades and friendships.

And somehow, that dormant part of my brain just kept making room.

And making room.

And making room.

Nearly twelve years later, I can confirm:

She was absolutely right.

I would just really like to know if she ever figured out how to turn it off.

Before kids, I thought I was excellent at multitasking.

And honestly, I probably was.

But that Jessica was an amateur.

This Jessica can be working on a college assignment while simultaneously remembering a school lunch account needs money, somebody has makeup work, there’s a swim meet coming, I still haven’t ordered school pictures and we’re probably out of something important.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, someone will text me:

“Hey! Quick question…”

I have learned that quick questions are rarely quick (I own a huge part of why they aren’t).

Sometimes I don’t even know which version of Jessica is supposed to answer.

Mom Jessica? College Jessica? PTO Jessica? Church Jessica? Author Jessica?

I need one of those automated phone systems.

Thank you for calling Jessica. For questions regarding children, press one. For church graphics, press two. For school events, press three. For Eleven Kru, press four. If this is actually urgent, please hang up and call Cory.

And that’s just the stuff I know about.

A to-do list can’t account for the things that simply happen.

Like Monday, when Benson and Casen both apparently decided that pee and poop were no longer things we needed to keep contained.

One is a dog.

One is a three-year-old.

I’ll let you decide which one I had higher expectations for.

I came home from New York less than a week ago after walking almost 40 miles around Manhattan, carrying hundreds of pictures, an angry knee and apparently the delusion that I was going to “get caught up.”

I would like to formally withdraw that expectation.

I am doing the things. The things are also multiplying.

And I hesitate to even say that because I don’t want it to sound like a complaint—or a list of accomplishments I’m presenting for applause.

Most of this is stuff I chose.

I wanted the children. I chose college. I wanted to write books and build something of my own. I love serving my church and being involved in my kids’ schools. I wanted the trip to New York.

This isn’t a list of burdens I’m angry that I have to carry.

It’s a life I’m incredibly grateful I get to live.

But gratitude does not make a person infinitely capable.

And somewhere along the way, I think I started treating my ability to carry a lot as evidence that I should carry a lot.

Those aren’t the same thing.

I Know You Are Working Hard, Babe.

Cory said that to me recently.

Just that.

“I know you are working hard, babe.”

Words that probably weren’t intended to become a whole existential crisis.

But here we are.

Because there was something about I know.

Not:

Did you finish everything?

Not:

What’s still left?

Just—

I know.

And I realized how badly I needed to hear that.

Not because I needed congratulations. I needed someone to see the work that doesn’t always produce something visible.

You can run at full capacity for an entire day and go to bed with the house looking worse than it did when you woke up. You can answer ten emails and have twelve new ones. You can cross five things off a list and add seven.

And apparently you can clean up poop and discover more poop.

At the end of some days, the only tangible evidence I have is that everyone survived.

Which, depending on the day, should probably count for more.

Martha, Martha

I’ve been thinking about Martha lately.

The story is in Luke 10.

Jesus comes to the home of Martha and Mary, and while Mary sits at Jesus’ feet, Martha is busy serving.

And I think sometimes we’ve reduced that story to:

Don’t be busy. Be Mary.

But Martha wasn’t wasting her time.

She was serving.

That’s what gets me.

Jesus didn’t walk into her house and find her doing something meaningless.

Yet He says:

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one.”

— Luke 10:41–42, NIV

Many things.

Well.

That feels a little personal.

Because maybe the danger isn’t always that we’re spending our lives doing things that don’t matter.

Maybe sometimes the danger is that everything matters.

My kids. My marriage. School and college. Ministry. The book and the business. My friendships and commitments.

It all matters.

And when everything matters, everything starts to feel urgent.

But important and urgent aren’t the same thing either.

That’s where I get myself into trouble.

Because I know I can carry a lot.

Motherhood taught me that.

That dormant part of my brain switched on almost fourteen years ago with my first baby, and every child since has somehow asked it to make room for things I didn’t know were coming.

But maybe motherhood taught me I was capable of carrying more than I ever imagined while God is teaching me that doesn’t mean I was meant to carry everything.

Maybe my prayer doesn’t always need to be:

God, help me do more.

Maybe sometimes it needs to be:

God, show me what matters right now.

Show me what You’ve asked me to carry, what I’ve picked up all by myself, and give me the wisdom to know the difference.

The Baby Turns Twelve

And here’s the part that’s messing with me.

The baby I was holding during that season when my doctor told me about this magical new part of my brain?

He turns twelve Friday.

Twelve.

I don’t know how that’s possible.

I have approximately four thousand calendar entries proving that I was here for the entire thing, and somehow it still happened too fast.

This week, somewhere in the middle of everything on my calendar, there is something different.

Lunch with Carter for his birthday.

Written down, it looks like one more thing.

Another place I need to be.

Another block on the calendar.

Except it isn’t.

And maybe that’s what Moses was getting at when he prayed:

“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

— Psalm 90:12, NIV

I’ve always heard number our days and thought about the brevity of life.

But lately I wonder if part of numbering our days is learning to recognize that they aren’t interchangeable.

There will be another day to answer the email. Finish the graphic. Place the Walmart order. Do the assignment. Wash the laundry.

There will always be another list.

But there will never be another September 25, 2026, when my boy turns twelve.

And if I keep telling myself that I’ll be fully present after I get everything done, I’m going to wait through my whole life.

Because the list is never going to be done.

Maybe I Don’t Need More Capacity

For years, I’ve prayed for strength to carry everything in front of me.

And God has been faithful.

But maybe more capacity isn’t what I need in this season.

Maybe I need discernment.

Because Can I carry it? and Am I supposed to carry it? are two very different questions.

Maybe the next thing God is teaching me isn’t how to hold more.

Maybe He’s teaching me what I can put down.

Not forever.

Just for today.

Because Friday, there will be things unfinished.

There will be emails unanswered.

Module 6 will still exist.

Coop’s Big What If will still need work.

Fall Fest will still be coming.

Someone will almost certainly text me a “quick question.”

And, given today’s track record, there is at least a moderate chance somebody will pee somewhere they shouldn’t.

But I’m going to lunch with my twelve-year-old.

The baby who helped turn on a part of my brain I didn’t even know existed.

And for a little while, I’m going to let everything else be unfinished.

Maybe that’s not dropping the ball.

Maybe that’s wisdom.

The list will still be here Saturday.

Twelve won’t.

Fiercely, Jessica