My name is Marie Osborne, and I am a mom.

It’s a title that makes me squirm a little uncomfortably at times, like an itchy, ill-fitting hand-me-down.

Other times, motherhood seems infused in my soul, seeping out of my pores like it’s been lingering under the surface waiting to spill out.

But mostly, I just feel like a dummy and a weirdo and a complete and utter mess.

I love my little people, my Little Mister and the twin Little Misses. But I also struggle with what “Mom” actually means. Who is this “Mom” and what has she done with “Marie?”

Three years ago, I went to the hospital and had a kid.

One day I was me, the next I was “mom.”

I’m not gonna lie. It kinda gave me whiplash.

How can I be me and mom at the same time? I felt the tension of identities tugging at me. This new body, this new person, these new responsibilities, stuck in all new routines.

How could I still be Marie and not be the same shape or have the same hobbies or keep the same hours or have the same freedoms? I felt like the woman I knew had been snatched from me somehow.

Not until my second pregnancy did “Mom Marie” start to coalesce. I came across this quote from Emily Wierenga’s Mom in the Mirror just as I was ready to read it.

I wasn’t being asked to lose myself, in order to become wife or mother. Instead, I was being challenged to find those role(s) within myself, to uncover some of the gifts that had been embedded in me, as a female when I was conceived, to allow them to develop and flourish. Instead of losing myself, I was becoming more myself.

The One who created me sewed me together in my mother’s womb knowing he would sew another in mine. He sewed together these arms together way back when to hold and love and comfort my children now, just as he is strengthening my arms today so I can release my children in the future.

I am not defined by who I was pre-motherhood.

I am not defined by being a mom now.

I am defined by the One who created me knowing I would be all these women: little girl, single student, new wife, young mother, and every other role in between and yet to come.

I am Marie Osborne and I am a mom.

My motherhood does not erase the woman I used to be, but it does shape the woman I will become. I will not lose myself in it, but become more myself through it. And maybe, just maybe, a little more like Jesus, too. Fingers crossed.