Holy Suffering in Motherhood

no grit, no glory

“As iron is fashioned by fire and on the anvil, so in the fire of suffering and under the weight of trials, our souls receive that form which our Lord desires them to have.”
--St. Madeline Sophie Barat

all four of them, one Sunday before mass.

The Christian theology I was raised up in talked about the last being first. How in the beatitudes Jesus himself amplifies the meek. This ‘upside down economy,’ as my religion teacher in Catholic school taught us, was the way and world of God. Somehow, even as a sixteen-year-old, this made sense to me.

No way around it, motherhood is full of suffering. There’s the long-drawn-out weeks of first trimester, the sometimes-soul crushing exhaustion of picking up toys, and repetitive tasks: bottles, laundry, dishes, bedtime, bath, prayers. I am sometimes chided for being overly positive about motherhood or “making it look easy.” I was late to the game with motherhood, didn’t anticipate even the blessing of one baby, so I guess there’s some truth to me holding a sunnier perspective. I still don’t believe complaints are a solution. I wasn’t sure what the solution was until recently and had to mull it over a bit. I’ve come to believe it lies in this: learning to make friends with suffering.

The pandemic illustrated the distain for caretaking in feminist think pieces. In a striking photo, a woman wept over a pile of laundry, lit by the dryer’s dramatic yellow light. I pictured my grandmother, how worn and soft her hands were after decades of service to her family, the totally other worldly beauty of them. These articles refuse to allow an inch for the idea that perhaps there might be greater meaning besides lament to all of this, the hard and holy work of motherhood.

We are a society that runs as far as we can from suffering. We are obsessed with comfort. I too am often wrapped up in my own comfort, hate inconvenience, and yet so little of the fruit in my life is yielded by my own selfishness. Alternatively, Catholic theology teaches that suffering is Holy. That we can unite our suffering here on earth with something greater. That suffering isn’t a punishment for our imperfections but can become a galvanizing tool for greatness.

I find this theology profoundly comforting and one of the greatest reasons for my reversion. Prosperity Gospel can’t seem to answer for the beautiful and often deeply difficult lives of saints or even ordinary people whose legacies enrapture us to this day, people like St. Maximillian Kolbe or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. During my home birth with Theodore, I had an affirmation card I kept reading during transition: “I can unite my suffering with Jesus’ on the cross.” Could I consider it “pure joy” when I met my son as the sun rose after the hard work of an unmedicated labor where I vomited in our sink and my water broke all over our stairs? I believe so. Was the suffering a punishment or an opportunity to press on? As a mother where does this intersect and sit at odds with the present zeitgeist of mama culture bitterness?

All the policy in the world cannot save us if the goal is comfort and no personal growth. Thoughtless demands, cancelling, killing our babies, nor primal screams can suffice if we can’t find peace in the reality that motherhood—and life-- won’t stretch us. We are brought to our knees, that’s a promise. When we come to the end of ourselves, we have just begun to open a door to something else entirely beautiful if we’re willing to.

In my mere four years of motherhood, I’ve found the sweetest moments are often after times of suffering. I am not certain why this is the way it is, but I am learning daily to surrender and unite my challenging moments to God’s.