Becoming

Tonight I was thinking about the fact that I am, undeniably, a grown up: 35 years old, gray hair, wrinkles, three children, two mortgages (yes, our former home is STILL on the market), 8 years of marriage and my share of life experience. I am an adult. Less clear to me, however, was when exactly it happened.

I wrote a noteworthy essay my freshman year of college about my first kiss. It took place the weekend before I started my freshman year of high school. It was a total set up on the part of my best friend, JT. She and I decided that I simply could not start high school having never had my period OR without ever having been kissed. Since we could not control the first fact, we made a plan to resolve the second. Her poor neighbor Byron was the unsuspecting victim. Since I'd never even met him, JT made the phone call. Later that night, according to plan, we stuffed our beds to appear as if we were still in them, crept out of the house after her Mom was asleep and walked a couple of blocks to Byron's house.

After throwing rocks at his window he came downstairs, made a lap around the block with us, kissed me once under a large bush at the end of his street (with JT only a few feet away on look out duty) then returned home. I can still remember rushing back to JT's house to stare at myself in her bathroom mirror. I wanted to see if I looked any different...more grown up. Of course, I did not. Being kissed did not make me a woman.

I started thinking about the moment that I became a wife, a mother, a Christian... While there are ceremonies and documents that mark each of those identities, in my mind there were a series of experiences that feel more like the true moments.

I didn't yet feel like a wife when I walked down the aisle at the end of my wedding...a bride, yes, but not yet a wife. That moment came the first time we had to make a major decision together and again when we packed up after only 4 months of marriage and moved several states away. It was as we walked through difficult circumstances of infertility, moving, multiples, sickness and learning to be parents I truly became a wife.

My identity as mother is marked by similar moments of becoming. Of course it began with my positive pregnancy test, but "Mommy" is a title I have earned from catching vomit with my bare hands, resuscitating a choking child, sleepless nights, lunchbox packing, bedtime prayers and endless hours of coloring, playdoh and storybook reading.

It is the same with all the titles we wear...friend, adult, believer. We become most things over time. I thought about the old oak trees on our property that have fallen over the last couple of years. The truth of their 'becoming' is found in their rings. Some show evidence of years of plenty and others of years of want. No one ring is the story of that tree...it is the combination of them all.

And such it is with our lives. It is rarely a moment or an experience that makes us. God weaves our lives into a rich tapestry. If you were to only look at the back of the canvas you would see knots, loose strings, apparent chaos. It is only by stepping back and taking in the project from the right angle that you can appreciate the beauty of the creation.

Help me remember, Lord.