Changed by Motherhood: Stories of grace, growth and unexpected transformation

 In Part 1 of a continuing Highlands Insider series, local mothers reflect on how motherhood reshaped their hearts, priorities, faith and understanding of love.

Editor’s Note:
 This story is part of a continuing Highlands Insider series honoring mothers from all walks of life. Throughout the coming weeks, we will share stories from biological mothers, adoptive mothers, foster mothers, working mothers, stay-at-home mothers, grandmothers and women raising children through many different paths and seasons of life. Each story reflects the beauty, challenges, sacrifices and blessings that motherhood can bring.

“I am not what I ought to be,
 I am not what I want to be,
 I am not what I hope to be in another world;
 but still I am not what I once used to be,
 and by the grace of God I am what I am.”
 ~ John Newton

Mother’s Day celebrates the innate beauty of motherhood. The grit of it is often shoved under the carpet for the duration of the celebration. The mismatched expectations are tucked away into the sock basket of our souls to sort out another day. It is the love, on Mother’s Day, that rises to the top like cranberries in a watershed harvest.

Maybe some of you wonder how your 10-year-old self, your 17-year-old self, your 35-year-old self, even your 75-year-old self found yourself where you are today in this motherhood journey. I find myself surprised in a myriad of ways.

Maybe one of motherhood’s greatest surprises is how God changes us, grows our hearts and stretches us, child by child, until one day we find ourselves becoming more than we ever dared dream.

In the series Changed by Motherhood, six Cookeville mothers share how motherhood both changed and surprised them. Their stories are worth reading no matter the season through which you are walking. Today, Highlands Insider shares two of those stories.

Wendy Williams

If you picked up a bouquet of peonies this last weekend for Mother’s Day at either Soul Craft Tech or The Painted House, you might have run into local flower farmer Wendy Williams. She would tell you that she is not who she used to be before she had children.

Neither flowers nor children were on her radar before she met her husband, Jeff, 33 years ago. Like many young adults of the 1980s shaped by the “Wonder Woman Syndrome,” she worked hard and built a career.

“My life before children was great. I had a successful career as a legal assistant, did what I wanted when I wanted to. My time was mine, and I could do whatever I wanted to,” Williams said. “Then I fell in love with my husband. I was at the point in my life where I was content and not looking for anyone to date, and then there he was.”

The naturalness of motherhood surprised Williams.

“When I had my first baby girl, I really can’t describe how it changed me,” Williams said. “It just seemed natural.”

The changes, though, were real.

“My time wasn’t just about me, but my time was so filled with motherhood things that I really didn’t think about it,” Williams said. “Four years later and two more baby girls: what I used to think were priorities just weren’t anymore. I felt a deeper love than I thought possible.”

Leaving behind her career and the “Wonder Woman Syndrome,” Williams homeschooled her daughters and even fell in love with history, a subject she once disliked in high school. She appreciated Tennessee Tech University’s classes for school-aged children and Peachtree Learning Center. History projects, animal studies, geography and gardening became part of daily life.

“We did so many learning projects together,” Williams said.

Three Sisters Farm was born from one of those gardening projects.

“My girls would plant, harvest and arrange flowers. What girls don’t like flowers? We would sell at the Farmers Market, which was a great accounting lesson, and prepare flowers for weddings, which was a great lesson in customer service and taking pride in our work.”

Real-life situations became a hands-on classroom.

The most surprising thing about motherhood, Williams said, was that it wasn’t as hard as people told her it would be.

“Yes, it was tricky at times, but the joy of watching my girls grow and mature into beautiful, loving adults is the best gift anyone could have given,” Williams said. “Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of trials and tribulations being a parent, and I didn’t always get it right, but I did my best, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I have got to say, I feel very lucky that I had and still have a great relationship with my girls. I’m so proud of them, all in their 30s now.”

Motherhood took a legal assistant and transformed her into a teacher, a flower farmer and a Master Gardener with the patience to plant, nurture and harvest through both ordinary days and changing seasons.

“Being a mother is about learning about the strengths you didn’t know you had.” — Wendy Williams
 “There’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.” — Jill Churchill

Grace Johnson

You just might find Grace Johnson hosting a neighborhood Cartoon Club for her children, J.D., Annalyn and Aria, along with neighborhood friends. You might also find her overseeing the PEP Foundation’s Backpack Program and other initiatives within the Putnam County School System as community coordinator for the Putnam Education Partnership Foundation. Wherever you find her, she is creating a thriving and vibrant environment for her children.

Johnson candidly admits motherhood changed her perspective, deepened her relationship with Christ and allowed her to savor the beauty of generational relationships.

“Before becoming a mom, I was extremely driven to ‘be the best’ at anything I attempted,” Johnson said. “I was a competitive college athlete, academically successful and spent a brief four-year career dedicated to my work in nonprofit. When I became a stay-at-home mom, everything changed.”

She quickly discovered there would be no awards ceremony for motherhood.

“Staring my inconsolable, colicky son in the face, I quickly came to terms with the harsh truth: there was no award ceremony or promotion for this work,” she said.

Over the next decade, motherhood transformed her heart in unexpected ways.

“The Lord worked an absolute miracle in my heart as I was transformed by motherhood,” Johnson said. “Not a spontaneous miracle, but the slowly unfolding and beautiful kind.”

She described years filled with pregnancies, nursing babies, sleepless nights and prayer.

“At my humble altar of laundry, I learned what it meant to just ‘be’ with the Lord, even when I was pitiful and unproductive,” Johnson said. “He, in turn, taught me how to just ‘be’ with my kids.”

That insight later helped her transition into single parenthood.

“The prize became our inside jokes, the books we read, the adventures we shared and the tears I got to wipe away,” Johnson said. “We got to make friends together, learn together, fail together, cheer for each other and never give up on each other.”

Johnson said the realities of motherhood stretched her emotionally, physically and spiritually far beyond what she expected.

“The sensory experience of smelling my baby, tickling my toddler, listening to little conversations between my preschoolers, silly selfies with my elementary kids and tasting muffins my big kids made all by themselves have all enriched my understanding of what the word ‘beautiful’ can mean,” she said.

Motherhood also changed her understanding of her own mother.

“My children have given me a glimpse into how much my mom loves me,” Johnson said. “You really can’t understand the sacrifice your parents make until you get a taste of it on the other side.”

“Motherhood never expires,” she added. “It just graduates into something bigger and more beautiful.”

The different and the more, the planting and harvesting, the rising and thriving through every surprise motherhood brings — all of it sharpens our perspective and helps us better understand how God sees us.

Motherhood is about planting seeds, watering faithfully and harvesting blessings through every season. It is through that work that many women become more than they ever imagined possible. And no mother is quite the same woman she was the day before labor began.