Post natal depression

When Lily was born I was thrilled to become a Mum, but I was also diagnosed with post natal depression. I know some people that would say that depression is not something that happens to real christians. I guess those people need to read more biographies! (Spurgeon's and Edward's)

Anyway, when I became a mum my hormones were crazy and my mind was not right and able to deal well with a new born baby. So I faced the darkness of depression... everything was a cause to fear and hardly anything was a cause to rejoice... Well, God in his mercy sustained me and helped me to walk through that terrible time. And now, He has given me the joy of having another baby. My beautiful Gabriela is far from being the baby from the book that every mother desires but she is wonderful and a token of God's faithfulness to me. As every baby she has good days and bad days, good nights and bad nights. No rocket science to say that. The difference is how I cope with this. When Lily was a baby everything that happened was a prescription of how life was going to be forever. That's why after a bad night sleep I was devastated... I just truly believed that from then on every night was going to be miserable and I would never recover my strength again! Now it sounds silly but at the time it was terrible.

I lived in fear. Now I live in hope. If Bella has a bad day, I think "Oh well, maybe tomorrow she feels better" And I rejoice in that! God in his mercy has let me taste how terrible and hard is to live in fear so now I can enjoy everyday seeing hope at the end of the day. I am so glad that God's mercies are new every day and with every new born!

Being a Mum

It is nothing new to say that being a mother it is hard work. You don't sleep as well as you used to, you don't have the quiet space that you used to, you are not free to go out at night as you used to. But although all those things are true, what I really find hard work it is not the physical tiredness but the emotional and spiritual one. My two little girls have been a real instrument in the redeemer's hand. My Lily is a delicious two year old who is active and chatty, who loves dancing and telling stories, who enjoys being thrown up in the air by her Daddy and eating chocolate biscuits or ANYTHING that has chocolate. In the middle of her little life she has exposed my heart so much. And I am grateful to God for it. She is challenging and makes me work really hard, but what she has achieved again and again is that I run to my Saviour and I bow down to Him because I have ran out of ideas on how to deal with Lily. If you see this in a negative way you can say that I have a very difficult daughter. But the way I am encouraged to see it today is that a have a wonderful daughter that helps me to deal with my own heart. God is good and doesn't let me be my own king, ruling my life with my own resources. He encourages me to go to Him, because in Him I find comfort and peace. There are SO many things that I can't fix in my Lily's life, and I am glad... not because it is easy, but because it pushes me to recognise who I am. I am a mother who needs God's help to raise her children. I am not a super mum, my child DOES have tantrums and DOES drive me crazy sometimes. I want to always be reminded, specially when she is a lovely christian woman, that it is NOT my doing but God's. And I hope that when that time comes my heart will be more in the image on Christ than now. Motherhood is a long path and children are not the only ones changed and shaped in it.