Purple marks surround my navel. Hidden under layers of clothes they are there, evidence of the burdens I’ve carried. Today my belly is tight again, filled with life that pokes, jabs, and rolls inside me. My midsection has reached the point where it cannot get any bigger without breaking. And so lately I can feel it–new layers of my own skin ripping apart to make room for the little being who lives inside me–the scars of tearing and healing.

It’s funny the place they’ve shown up. This small space around my belly button; the root which once connected me with my own mother. I wonder if there was a time she gazed down at her rounded abdomen and looked at me pushing her belly all out of shape, but loved me anyway, even though I was breaking her apart? Does she ever reflect on the scar that stretches across her body from where the doctors cut her open in order to save my life?

Shortly after my third baby was born someone asked me “did your third just break you? For me it was my second. My second kid just broke me. I just couldn’t do any more after that!” I smiled and laughed, but as I thought about it, I realized that, no, my newest baby hadn’t broken me. Three kids was certainly a lot of work and the transition was hard for our whole family, but my firstborn was really what broke me.

He was the one who interrupted me from myself and caused the break down and decay that comes with being a brand new mom. The sleepless night were the first hurdle. Then it was the fussy, highly-agile baby who walked at 7 months and turned every nap time into World War III. After that came the picky eating and defiant 2’s and 3’s that left me silently screaming at the top of my lungs and pulling my hair out as I doled out yet another bottomless portion of patience and endurance to simply make it through the next hour of coexisting with a toddler. I didn’t realize it then, but breaking–that’s what it was.

With each child I’ve been broken in new ways, each pregnancy leaving a purple scar to show for it’s labor. My belly is a soft, stretched out map of where I’ve been, and in some ways, it foretells where I have yet to go. Some marks have faded to a pale white, as though the years of mothering the child who left it behind has brought a purity to that once stained area of my soul.

The truth is that this shell of a body has shared its sacred space with five beautiful souls. Three in my home, one in my belly, and one resting with Jesus. I have had the privilege of cradling life five different times. I’ve experienced the honor that comes with being their mother, the challenge of watching them struggle to live in this world, and the heartache that comes from their pain which I cannot heal or fix or undo.

The marks I bare are not pretty. But they are truth. For me they symbolize something greater and are a constant reminder that new life requires stretching, sometimes beyond what’s comfortable or even possible. Life requires a sacrificial breaking down and dying to one’s own self. The stretching is an act of love. And new life will die without love.

And so today as I waddle about getting kicked in the ribs and endure the discomfort of my skin ripping apart underneath itself, I look at my navel with love. I know that beneath its surface lies a new creation; a world crowned with goodness and beauty. A safe haven, a tiny person wrapped inside the loving embrace of another. And right next to its beating heart is a tree of life; it’s job to provide nourishment to this new little human, who is so close to arriving. My belly is a picture of Eden, and part of me wishes this baby would never have to leave it. It’s a place full of potential, oneness, and bursting at every rounded corner with life and love. Painful and ugly as they might be, my stretch marks are a reminder of the sacrifice which makes it possible. They remind me not just of my own journey, but of the One who’s belly also bears a scar which made returning to Eden possible for me.

Sometimes love is best seen in the shape of a scar.