Audience of One [Two].

I stare at the strollers parked aside the hall:  the B.O.B., Britax, and Urbo lined with the others.  I watch the mom's, critiquing them from haircuts to necklaces, and if their wearing shorts, dresses, or jeans.  I peer at their children, evaluating unkempt hair or cute accessory, matching socks or bulging diaper.  I listen to the words tossed like ping-pong balls between -- from "yes ma'am" and "listen and obey" to "stop that!" and "get in here!"

In my daydreams, I'm groping imaginatively through shelves, peaking around the corner to see what the last mom had -- Melissa & Doug?  Target brand?  The Land of Nod?  Consignment sale? What is best?  What is in?

Then Pinterest blinks unyieldingly; Facebook flashes every child on the screen.  Then there's Baby Wise, Baby Boot Camp, and Bringing Up Bebe.  All the while, women in my circles speak their interest or give their insight...

And inwardly I'm full of checklists and to-dos and notes and brands and feeling the inner me interrogated...

And...

I'm not even pregnant, nor trying...

Yet here I am, collapsing under the self-incriminating and society-inducing pressure.  Babies babies babies.  Kids kids kids.  Brands, styles, colors, cribs....   Words spoken, implied, pressure induced....  Books borrowed, blogs read, and baby names reviewed...  Encroaching, en-reaching, enveloping me all so much I just want to either crawl away into a corner and hide for the next ten years, or pop like an exploding ballon just for fresh air so I can breath.

I find myself sitting and thinking and completely coming undone inside and wishing for God to just open the heavens for help in it all...

And he does.   He reminds me:  That I am made, created, loved, and adored always and for, an Audience of One.  It is he who made me, who created me.  And it is He who one day will make and create a child out of the love of me and Mark.  And it is He who will train and teach me to love that child, to dress that child, to create safe and sacred spaces in our home and life for that child.  It is He who I will, and already have, received approval from, to mother that child.

There are days when I get caught up in trying to be the mother I feel pressure from to be.  Either to be my mom, or Mark's mom, or the suburban Charlotte mom.  To look the part, act the part, have children who fit the part.  But that's not who God has called me to be.  He's called me to be surrendered, so that it is only He who I see.

As mothering takes its root someday in me, I am called to learn and live and walk and breath what God is reminding me...

That I live, I mother, for an Audience of One [Two: Mark].