Motherhood: Wrecking and Recreating Me in the Best Ways {Guest Post}

I'm excited to welcome back Natalie Brenner as a guest poster again today. Natalie is a fellow sister in the infertility struggle, victorious through Jesus. Welcome back, Natalie, we're glad to have you!

When she placed him in my arms, my whole body released a tension I didn’t realize it carried and simultaneously grew a necessary wound in my heart.

The gravity of a tiny life—which wasn’t tiny at all—shifted my whole world, changing me.

I breathed in his sweetness, only to exhale a gripping understanding of the sacred moments I was living.

There in the hospital we existed in complete complexity: immense and unexplainable joy crashing right into immeasurable grief and tragedy.

I could have never prepared for the sacred weight those moments held: his first mama placing him into my arms to become his mama.

Those moments changed me. Those moments of her deeming me worthy to be mother to her son changed me in ways difficult to process.

As I transitioned from childless and waiting to full arms and full heart...so much of myself changed.

Or maybe I simply became more of who I was created to be.

Either way, He has been using motherhood to transform me by placing a magnifying glass over my greatest weaknesses and strengths.

As she handed her son to me, making me mama, I stepped further into who He created me to be.

A confidence I hadn’t yet experienced bubbled up inside of me as I grabbed ahold of the commitment to protect, serve, and raise my new son with everything I had.This confidence created in me a bold courage I didn’t otherwise have.

Simultaneously a humility laid into me, bringing to focus the reality that I had so much to learn and so far to grow. A humility reminding me continuously that he is hers in a way he’ll never be mine, and vice versa. A humility reminding me there are so many hurt humans walking around due to their parents lack of humility...and I was not about to step into parenthood thinking I knew it all.




Becoming a mom has made me both more fierce and more gentle.

Motherhood has been teaching me the importance of courage and bravery, even when unpopular and uncomfortable. Motherhood has been teaching me the importance of sitting on my hands and listening to other’s experiences without trying to teach in return. Motherhood has been teaching me both speaking up and quieting down, honesty and grace infused in every piece.

Becoming a mama has changed me by inching me further along in my process of becoming more like Him. It is sanctifying in all the hardest ways, demanding my self-control and patience, demanding I set aside idols and ideals and control.

I’ve only been at this mama-thing for just shy of 19 months. By the grace of Jesus, I have two one year olds. Mothering has stretched me thin and also built me up. It has taught me patience and endurance. It has cracked my heart wide open in the best ways possible and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.



Before I was made mama, I thought motherhood would be hard...but I also thought it would be a delight.

It is. It is such a delight and such a gift and something I do my best not to take for granted.

Becoming a mom has changed me and wrecked me and broken me and is recreating me...and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

NATALIE BRENNER is wife to Loren and mom to two under two. She authored This Undeserved Life: Uncovering the gifts of grief and fullness of life which will be released September 18. She likes her wine red, ice cream served by the pint, and conversations vulnerable.

Natalie believes in the impossible and hopes to create safe spaces for every fractured soul. You can love Jesus or not, go to church or not: she'd love to have coffee with you. Natalie is a bookworm, a speaker, and a wanna-be runner. Connect with her at NatalieBrennerWrites.com and join her popular email list.

Preorder her book, email her “I preordered,” and receive pretty prints: This Undeserved Life
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