The Slain Idol
Complete
The moment I laid eyes on the two lines of that pregnancy test, I immediately fell in love. The child who would make me a mother, who would make my husband a father, and make our family feel complete—make me complete. I fell deeper in love with him the moment I laid my eyes on him. He was this perfect little child who was full of innocence and so much grace. For three months of his life, we were inseparable. I was his and he was mine to love and behold. Every smile, every cry, and every laughter that came out of his tiny soul melted my heart like a fiery wax candle. He gave me joy, he gave me a new identity, he gave me a new sense of purpose. Unbeknownst to me, in those first three months, I negligently put my son above the One who created him.
I felt lost and jealous for his love when I had to return to work. I didn’t want to share him with anyone else because he belonged to me. I slowly began to shrink into myself with discontentment because I loved my son so much; because he became my joy, identity and purpose. I didn’t know who I was apart from his need for me. As a young working mother, I didn’t want to believe I was under the hold of postpartum depression (PPD). How could I be depressed? I just gave birth to my child whom I have been praying for, for so long. I shook off the crying spells, mood swings, and fatigue as an exhaustion from juggling life and the new responsibilities of motherhood. But nothing could be further from the truth. In the midst of one of my greatest God-given joys, I was living with PPD as if it was my significant other. I was completely undone.
The Becoming
My PPD heightened and decided to wed me at the climax of our toxic relationship when my in-laws moved in, and my responsibilities at work increased. In a blink of an eye, the discontentment I previously felt turned into grief as I began to mourn the bond I once had with my son. The pieces of my joy—his smile, his cry, and his laugh—I forgot how it was like to be the only one he smiled at, to be the only one who could soothe him, to be the only one who could make him laugh. I grieved for months over our lost bond. In my protection, anger decided to mask my grief, wherein I wore my mask proudly towards my husband. I became someone I didn’t want to be because I lost my identity when I lost my son.
My mind became a home to an adopted child in my marriage with PPD. It was named “Cognitive Distortion”. There are many facets to Cognitive Distortion, but only two that pushed me towards the edge of devastation: polarized thinking and mental filtering. Polarized thinking is the concept that a circumstance in your life is “all-or-nothing”. In my life, my son was mine or he wasn’t. There was no middle ground to allow for the complexities of logical and realistic thoughts. As a result of my polarized thinking, I truly believed and lived out the false reality that Hezekiah was not my son, and I was not his mother. My mind mentally filtered out the true reality that I was Hezekiah’s mother. The mental filters magnified negative details within engagements between my son and I. I was brought to tears if I couldn’t soothe him, put him to sleep on my own, or if he chose someone else but me in our moments of togetherness. The purpose I had once found in him to be a nurturing mother, became that of a friend visiting someone else’s child.
I grew mentally fragile and became increasingly disconnected to the world. Easy chores became hard to do. Hobbies became obsolete. Seeing my family and friends at gatherings became my worst days. The crux of it all is that I began to avoid my own son. I spent hours in my room after work or immediately went to the kitchen to cook. I became simply a guest in my home.
Unraveled
My spirit was poor in trust and lacking in faith. I was crushed by the false reality I held onto, and I quenched my spirit by avoiding my personal devotion to God’s Word. I just wanted to be alone in the low valley God decided to put me in. But I wasn’t alone...still wedded to the one thing that had control over my entire being. It was hard to be divorced from PPD because he was in my very essence. I was in such a devastated state of mind that PPD would dare whisper to me suicide ideations. Almost every night I sobbed in the shower saying to myself, “this will end soon,” because even though I was living in a false reality, I knew this to be true—valleys become mountain peaks.
One day, God decided to meet me in one of my therapy sessions. As I was sobbing my soul out, He revealed to me the issue within my heart. Wisely enough, my therapist recommended the book, “Counterfeit Gods”, to me. As I read the book, the issue within my heart became more clear. Hezekiah became my god. I exchanged the God who created me for the object He created to bless me with.
“Abraham’s affection had become adoration. Previously, Abraham’s meaning in life had been dependent on God’s word. Now it was becoming dependent on Isaac’s love and well-being. The center of Abraham’s life was shifting. God was not saying you cannot love your son, but that you must not turn a loved one into a counterfeit god.”
“Isaac was a wonderful gift to Abraham, but he was not safe to have and hold until Abraham was willing to put God first. As long as Abraham never had to choose between his son and obedience to God, he could not see that his love was becoming idolatrous.”
Idols enslave, in which I was 100 percent enslaved by my son. His reaction and response towards me was the determination of how my day was going to be. I began to unravel in God’s truth to me. The root of the issue was never about my son’s inability to choose me, but my inability to choose God. Soon I saw that my sweet child was not mine to call, “my own”. He belongs to God, and God gave him to me to be his mother as a gift...as a blessing.
I quickly became divorced from PPD, and let go of the cognitive distortions that had been adopted into the home of my mind. In my repentance of my idolatry towards my son, God opened the floodgates for love to return to my son. It was like a crashing ocean wave came over me; I was overwhelmed by His love for me and the newfound love for my son. I no longer held my son to the standard of “either he was mine or he wasn’t”. I was no longer a friend visiting someone else’s son. I was no longer enslaved to an idol that couldn’t fulfill me. The reality (of course), is that I am his mother and he is my son. Just as God gave him as a gift for me, He gave my son as a gift for others as well. And one day, I pray, he will be a gift to many whom he will minister out to in God’s name.
So what did I learn from this? I was turned inside out to be unraveled by my Creator who desired for me to see how far I have shifted from Him. In my avoidance of God’s Word, He met me and gave me His Word to swallow because I am His beloved child. He saw me and knew where I was going, He tested me so I could come out as pure gold (Job 23:10). Hallelujah to a God whose grace is so infinite and love is so wide that He would help me slay the idol I made for myself.
To my [new] parents—search your heart and find if your heart has shifted.