Last week I sent my 7 year old wild girl off to second grade. There were no outer tears but my mama heart was a mix of emotions.
I often look at her with these eyes of wonder. Almost as if she isn’t mine. It’s a strange feeling to describe and I am not sure if another mother could say they have ever felt it.
She has grown up so much in the year, into this girl, this wild eyed lioness that even when she’s driving me insane I am still so enamored that God chose me to be her mom.
There are days when she is at school that I wish she had a cell phone so I could text her and tell her that I love her, that I am thinking of her and am so glad I am her mommy.
Our path has not always been easy. In fact it’s been marked and scarred with trauma and ugliness that only the God who gave her to me can heal.
We are walking that healing road now and it is just as painful as the one that got us here. Only the deeply rooted trees of beauty I see sprouting, like the emotions I feel when I look at her never wouldn’t have been there before.
She comes and gets in bed with me most nights and says:
“Mommy, I want to snuggle”
It’s then I think back to the girl I was 10 years ago. The girl who never thought she’d be a mom.
2003…….
I was living with Abigail’s dad whom I met in the Kansas State Hospital (OMG I just said that out loud. On the internets)
It’s ok. It doesn’t change who I am now.
I digress.
My days were spent being fueled by crack cocaine. It’s all I had to keep the deeply wounded parts of me at bay. I was told by so many different people, so many different things about “who I was” or “what I needed to do”
Diagnoses
Medications
Therapy
I chose instead to just do drugs. It was easier that way in my opinion. Plus, back then the crazy life suited me. It kept her dad and I together. Without the drugs we wouldn’t have survived as a couple. As a 22 year old I was sure he and I were going to spend the rest of our lives together and that that a picture perfect ending was sure to come.
Maybe…….
When I look back now I realize that I couldn’t see past each day. My only objective was to make sure I was intoxicated somehow. It did not matter what I put in my body as long as my reality was altered.
July 2005 is when everything started to unravel. We had lost our apartment, had been living in the Topeka Rescue Mission and were both burnt out and fried.
I don’t remember how it happened but we made the decision to move to Florida to escape the drug filled everything-ness of Kansas.
That’s when the shit hit the fan. Without drugs our “relationship” wasn’t the same. So the void was filled with alcohol.
Not.a.good.idea
I knew it was over; I just didn’t have a reason to leave.
Then December 3, 2005 at 315pm I heard the words that would, in the course of 20 seconds change my life FOREVER.
“Honey, it’s positive”
The nurse had to say it like 5 times. I am pretty sure she was pissed by the third time I asked her because she started talking a bunch of blood test mumbo jumbo but I blanked her out.
Pregnant
Me
A Baby
I was happy, he was not. His response was to go get a six pack.
Mmmmmmm yeah I am going to leave you hanging with that one.
I was not totally clean at that point but over the course of the next nine months there was radical change. I left her dad, I got clean, I became a Christian and then BOOM a baby.
Yet everything was still buried deep. The things I had been shoving down deeper and deeper with drugs I now used Jesus and legalism to shove down.
Cause you know if you love Jesus and follow ALL the rules then everything is perfect RIGHT ( sarcasm font)
But it wasn’t and it took some seriously life altering things to bring me to a place where the buried stuff was all spilled out, including my mothering.
So when I look at this beautiful, wild eyed, lioness now I am marveled that God chose me…. ME, to be her mom. Because He knew where the path would lead and where it would take us.
I have to take a second glance at her sometimes because I think to myself “WOAH, she came from me?”
Being her mom is a sacred thing.
A beautiful thing.
A holy thing.
All because of how it came about. I was a junk show when I found out I was pregnant yet still in that moment there was hope of something different, something bigger than myself.
Somehow there still is.
As Always,
Bethany
Bethany G. Paget 
August 22, 2013 at 11:20 am
I know many would read your story and see it as a breaking. I see strength! What a big, bold heart you have to take the determined steps necessary to ensure a good life for your daughter. She is beautiful, by the way. Thank you so much for trusting us out here with your story and letting us get to know you better. Keep it coming. I’m sure you have plenty of wisdom gleaned through your life that we need you to share.
August 22, 2013 at 11:22 am
Wow. Bethany, this is amazing. Really. A beautiful, hopeful story of rescue and redemption. And I know how hard it is to walk out very day. I respect and love you so much!!
August 22, 2013 at 1:12 pm
Wow Bethany, just beautiful!! About two years ago, I sponsored a girl through RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) who was entering the Catholic Church, and she had a very similar story. She calls her son her Guardian Angel, because she is convinced she would have died from the drugs-alcohol intake she had been consuming before conception.
My parents would write cute notes to us on our lunch bags- maybe find little ways to tell her like that, too?
Thank you again and again for sharing this story! God bless.
August 22, 2013 at 1:24 pm
wow this is a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing!
August 22, 2013 at 2:43 pm
We actually have a “mailbox system” it’s kinda cute. She has one as do I and we pass each other notes back and forth. She actually gets upset if the “mail lady” hasn’t come in awhile.
August 23, 2013 at 6:39 pm
You are beautiful, Abigail is beautiful and your writing is beautiful. You are truly gifted.
August 30, 2013 at 7:19 am
You are such a brave, daring soul. I love reading your story.
Also, our stories are so different…and yet the same in some ways. That astounds me. It astounds me that I can read this: “When I look back now I realize that I couldn’t see past each day.” and see my own self in that truth. It astounds me that I can say “me, too.”
I love this. And you.
August 30, 2013 at 1:43 pm
Ditto everything Beth said because I can’t say it better. But seriously. Love! This and you and your precious daughter. 🙂
Also, reading comments, I love your mailbox system. What a fabulous idea. My daughter is always writing love notes to me and I’m usually leaving little hearts and happy grams on her school pages. You’re such a good mom and so creative!
September 2, 2013 at 12:40 am
Wow, Bethany. You have got a STORY. Story unfolding. I was already glad to have met you, here and there, but this is really something. Resurrection. Redemption. Also…I’ve been looking for that sarcasm font.