Hey sweet friend,
I found myself thinking about how my quality of life has decreased since I had my son. I’m a new mom navigating the craziness of the newborn phase for the first time. I had heard that the newborn days are challenging. People cheerfully “warned” me about the 2 a.m. feedings and diaper changes, but they spoke with a reminiscent tone of voice that made me think it can’t really be that bad. Oh, how naive I was.
Becoming a mom is hard…
After the first week of caring for my son I called my mom and told her, “I didn’t know that people actually lived like this. I didn’t even know it was possible to function on this little sleep.” As any mom knows, the sleep deprivation during the newborn phase is ROUGH. Don’t get me wrong, the third trimester of pregnancy was exhausting. But there’s something about getting to choose your own bedtime that now seems so luxurious. With a newborn it’s “sleep when the baby sleeps.”
It’s this lack of freedom that feels most difficult and prompted me to complain, with a yawn, about diminished quality of life. It’s the fact that with my nine-week old, “bedtime” is more of a suggestion. I miss sleeping through the night. I miss free time with my husband. I miss sitting down on the couch at night to watch a TV show uninterrupted.
But as I was gulping down my coffee this morning and my inner voice was griping about quality of life, a question popped into my head: What does quality of life even mean?
What Quality of Life Means Now
Quality of Sleep?
I’ve been getting less sleep, and in between nighttime feedings my rest is less restful. But during those feedings, I get to nurture and nourish a precious little life. I get to watch his sleepy eyes close when he finds comfort in my tired arms. I get to tell him about the best love there is when I sing “Jesus Loves Me” (his favorite song right now).
Relationship Changes
My husband and I don’t get to go on any spontaneous dates or cook a meal together. We don’t have the free time to cuddle up in front of the TV and watch our favorite show. We can hardly have a conversation without an interruption or one of us forgetting what we were saying because we’re so sleep deprived! So, our quality time has gone down dramatically… But on the other hand, now we have shared quality time with our little son.
We get to share in the delight of seeing our baby smile. We get to work as a team planning for the future as we watch that future grow right in front of us. My love for my husband has grown more than I thought possible since I’ve watched him become a dad who showers love on his baby boy, cares for me, and supports his family. Although it’s challenging to navigate the change, the quality of our relationship has actually changed for the better.
Quality of Faith
The quality of my faith has changed. When I think of the completely overwhelming love I have for my son, I am amazed that God calls me his child. That he has an even more perfect love for me. When I see the way that my husband gazes at our baby with so much joy and pride, I’m in wonder that God calls himself my Father. That he could find such joy in me. When I think of my desire to provide for everything my son needs, I’m so grateful Jesus taught us to pray for daily bread. That he is the source of everything my family needs.
Although I don’t have the same life I did just two months ago, my quality of life hasn’t diminished – it’s just changed. I see that I have a new quality of life.
New Quality of Life in Christ
Think About These Things…
This doesn’t just apply to the newborn phase and parenthood. We can see this new quality in other seasons of change (a new job, starting graduate school, a big move, getting married) or challenge (working hard to pay off debt, being diagnosed with a chronic illness, becoming a caretaker for a loved one). Even life changes we’ve longed for, like getting married or having a baby, are stressful! With every change, there is both loss and gain. When we’re deep in the emotions of our situation and feeling overwhelmed by what we’ve lost, we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us see the gain – the new quality of life we’ve been given.
We don’t deny that it’s hard. We can’t put a bandaid on the situation by smiling and shouting to the world, “everything is great!”. I’m not encouraging false positivity. It’s necessary for us to acknowledge hardship, to recognize our emotions, and to view the situation honestly. And yet, Scripture tells us:
whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Philippians 4:8
Paul’s Example
The apostle Paul, the author of that verse, wrote the letter to the Philippians while he was in prison and facing execution. Talk about a loss of quality of life! Yet this letter is full of gratitude, and encouragement to the believers in Philippi and praise and thanksgiving to God. Even in a seemingly awful situation, Paul saw what was honorable and excellent in it. He praised God for the new thing HE was doing.
In the first chapter, Paul explains how his imprisonment helped the gospel to spread. Paul was able to tell the guards about Jesus and other believers were emboldened by Paul’s actions to witness even more. Even though he knows he might die soon, Paul writes:
Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
Philippians 1:18-20
This is not a bandaid solution to a terrible situation. Paul found his new quality of life in Jesus and the message of his love. In changes and challenging experiences, we have the option to focus on our losses or on what we’ve gained. We can choose to direct our thoughts toward true, lovely, and excellent things. That’s how we can truly enjoy a new quality of life.