| An excerpt from a beautiful entry by Kate Cousino:
What I was
unprepared for, despite all the reading I did on motherhood during
pregnancy and before, was the way this stage in my life would strip me
bare of all my labels, all of the still new and tender ways I explained
myself to myself and to others. Throughout my high school and college
years I knew myself as a poet, an actor, an academic, a student of
history and philosophy, a writer, a loud voice for peace and justice
(or so I liked to think) in whatever community I was in, a friend and
counselor. Now...I'm not sure whether I am any of those things, or
whether the labels ever mattered. Not that these are bad things to
be...but in a life now filled with quiet, hidden acts that have no
label, that are not visible to be judged by anyone but God and myself,
perhaps there is a lesson about the limits of posturing, of the roles
we assume in order to delineate our character before others. A
life without these delineations leaves me at a loss when it comes to
making small talk with strangers, but perhaps – perhaps, by the grace
of God – it will prepare my heart for loving others less for what they
are or do, and more for who God made them to be. Perhaps the value of
small things done in hiding will even reconcile me to the discomfort of
being stripped bare, even as I hope that some day I will recover my
lost voice. Except replace poetry with tech-stuff and you have exactly how I feel.
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