Mothers are like marble.
Our tensile strength is fragile.

Sometimes
we feel ourselves
reducing.
Chipped away.
Cracking,
even
smashed apart.

Once, we think,
we were a mountain,
yet we have decreased
in both size
and stature.

But

Mothers are like marble.
When pressed we are resolute.


Once we were but
indecipherable slabs.
Now we are sculpture,
Carved by love.
That chipping and cracking,
(yes, even the smashing)
makes us a thing of beauty.

I studied Michelangelo with my children this past school year, and I learned a lot about marble. I had no idea that marble has one of the weakest tensile strengths, prone as it is to cracks and and breakage when put under a great load. In contrast it’s compressive strength is staggeringly high, sometimes higher than steel. Marble can withstand incredible pressure, and yet it cracks and breaks easily, which makes for the perfect material for sculpture. How akin to motherhood. You will not meet an honest mother who does not admit that motherhood has changed her, even made her feel somehow less herself. We all have a sense of pieces of who we thought we are being chipped away as our bodies change to make a home for our child, as our sleep is hampered, and our focus in life shifts from our own autonomy to being the source of survival for another human being. It can feel at times like we are being reduced in agonizing ways. Yet, upon closer inspection, we find that this chipping away has been a refining process, and this changing of who we thought we once were, has made us something new and beautiful. The Great Sculptor often uses motherhood to refine and sanctify us, and when we look at all that has changed, we find the diminishing we feel is not a loss, but a necessary and beautiful process by which we come to understand how to love like Christ loves us. In motherhood we find ourselves chipped away, yes, and yet as we’re pressed we stand more firmly in the love of Christ, relying increasingly upon his strength rather than our own weakness.