19 January 2021
By Ashleigh Donnelly
The COVID-19 pandemic took many of us back to the basics. We
were challenged to live a year stripped of its frills. Before 2020 I was guilty
of an inflated sense of control over my life consistent with modern, western
thinking. Then came March 2020 and our entire calendars were stripped bare. My
trip to Rome. Cancelled. My cousin’s 21st birthday party. Cancelled. Every
event at work. Cancelled. None of us were really sure what we would be doing
next week, let alone next month. As someone who likes to plan ahead and be
organised, I found this lack of certainty over my future daunting, and even
scary.
Then November came, and I had a baby. If I was ever to truly
relinquish control, this was it. After finishing up at work, I spent November
waiting and dreaming of this new life within me. Who would she become? And who
would I become as I embraced this new identity as a mother? I’d resigned from
my job at CatholicCare and we moved out of our unit in Ashfield to be closer to
family on the Central Coast. Everything was new. And I had no idea when this
baby would arrive. As the due date approached, I would wake up each morning
wondering if today was the day that our life would change forever. And as night
approached I wondered whether I would be woken by the pangs of labour.
Finally, the day arrived when our girl was ready to enter
the world. Again, nothing about the birth experience was in my control. The
birth plan I prepared became obsolete within hours and our beautiful girl
entered the world by emergency caesarean 18 hours later.
As I rock my girl to sleep in the wee hours of the morning I
am awed by the miracle of life. For nine months I carried this child that God
created for such a time as this. As the night turns to morning after a few
hours of sleep, I wonder what the day ahead will bring. I wonder, rather than
plan, because any kind of routine is still weeks away. If COVID taught me to
relinquish control, having a baby drilled it into me. I have learnt to be vulnerable.
I have learnt to ask for help and to look to my village for support. It takes a
village to raise a child. But it also takes a village to raise a mother.
This experience of relinquishing control has really changed
the way I enter Lent this year. During Lent we relinquish control over
everything in our lives - our time, our talents, our finances - and we hand
everything over to God. In this Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus tells Simon and his
brother Andrew to “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” Simon and
Andrew must leave their nets behind and go out into the sea despite the threat
of a storm.
When we venture into the deep we are exposed and vulnerable.
In those first few weeks of motherhood I felt like everything in my life had
changed. I still hadn’t come to terms with my new identity as a mother, and
when Facebook memories of carefree days popped up I became nostalgic for this
past life. If there was a time in my life when I felt drawn out into the deep,
this was it. And I was vulnerable, both physically as I recovered and
emotionally as I embraced this huge new responsibility as a mother.
At seven weeks old, I look into the eyes of my precious
daughter and I am captivated by the wonder of life. There is nothing in the
world I feel like I am meant to do more than being this child’s mother and
raising her to be a woman of courage and faith, like the fishermen who left
their nets behind to follow Jesus.
Ashleigh Donnelly and her husband, Justin and daughter, Rosemary are parishioners at St Patrick’s Catholic Parish East Gosford. Ashleigh has worked as a Social Worker at CatholicCare and is a member of the Vatican’s newly established International Youth Advisory Body.