Refined by fire: a mothers becoming

I thought becoming a mother would feel like coming home.
Instead, it felt like I was losing myself.

After the birth of my first daughter, I found myself in a fog I couldn’t explain. What I had imagined to be a season of joy and fullness became one of unraveling. I had known sorrow before—passing waves of sadness, moments of doubt—but this was different. This was heavier. Lonelier. And completely disorienting.

My body no longer felt like mine—cut open by surgery, drained by sleepless nights, and stretched by the demands of motherhood. I didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror. I didn’t feel like myself. And yet there I was, holding the most beautiful baby girl in my arms… wondering how I could feel so utterly incomplete.

What I didn’t understand then was that I wasn’t just exhausted—I was being undone in the most sacred of ways. I wasn’t being broken. I was being refined.

Like a diamond forged in fire, I was being shaped into the mother and woman God had always destined me to become.

But first, something had to die.
The version of me who clung to control.
The one who believed she had to have it all together.
The one who thought she had to earn her worthiness.
The one who was terrified of not being enough.

She had to be surrendered.

And I resisted it. I fought the unraveling, and in that resistance, I sank deeper—into postpartum depression, into anxiety, into silence. It wasn’t until I began to release what was and embrace what is that I could finally begin to breathe again.

I started facing the fears that had followed me into motherhood:
The fear of failing her.
The fear of losing myself.
The fear of not being enough for the magnitude of this love.
And perhaps the deepest one—the fear of losing her.

That fear haunted the quiet hours.
The what-ifs. The intrusive thoughts. The fragile realization that life can change in an instant.
No one tells you how becoming a mother cracks your heart wide open to love… and to loss.

I didn’t know how to hold that much beauty and that much fear in the same breath.
So, for a while, I didn’t.
I tried to control what I could—my thoughts, her sleep schedule, the environment around us—but all it did was exhaust me more.
It wasn’t until I loosened my grip and let grace flood in that things began to shift.

And in that surrender, I started to rise.
Not into someone new—but into the woman who had always been within me, waiting to be embraced.

Motherhood has been the most soul-stretching journey of my life. And yet, it’s been the most sacred. My daughters have become my greatest teachers. In their innocence, they reflect the deepest truths. They breathe wonder into the mundane and sweetness into the struggle. Without knowing it, they are the catalysts of my transformation.

They are living reminders of God’s love—proof that His light shines brightest through our most broken places.

So if you’re walking through the fire—if you feel like you’re being undone—hold on.
You’re not falling apart.
You’re being refined.
And everything you are becoming is already within you… waiting to rise.