Being a mom is hard.
Now before I go into how amazing it is also, and try and do penance for my last sentence, I just want us all to soak it in for a minute.
Being a mom is hard.
We worry about everything. Am I doing this all wrong? Am I going to cause psychological damage to my child if I do this this way? Why is my child doing that when his peers are doing it another way? What in the world was that toddler outburst, and where did it come from? And the questions go on and on.
And yet, we are trying our very darndest to do the very best we can, because we love our little children in such a way that is impossible to put into words. We feel honored to have been blessed with this responsibility of being the stewards of these precious little people on this earth. In between wiping up the spills, the smears, the snot, and the tears, we are reading parenting books and tips, and then trying to remember what we read in the heat of the moment. We comfort when scared. We kiss when there are boos boos, and when there are not. We are on our knees looking into big, beautiful, innocent eyes more throughout the day than we are on our feet. We are crawling all over the house racing trains and cars. We are encouraging independence, while wishing they would always be little. We are (re-) becoming well versed in nursery rhymes, lullabies, and Stuart Little. We are reading storybook after storybook with our children in our laps, and enjoying every moment of the smell of their little heads just under our noses. We have piles of laundry nagging at us, dishes in sink, and closets that need organizing, and we are silently praying no one will drop by and see our mess.
This is not a weekend job. This is not an on-again, off-again thing. This is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is waking up at all hours of the night when a child needs us, and not being resentful of it in the slightest because knowing that they need us makes our hearts swell with love in those quiet, wee hours, as if there were any more room in our hearts to begin with. We teach colors and numbers and songs and compassion. We explore park pathways and make up elaborate tales that will send our children's imaginations reeling, and get more satisfaction from that than any amount of money we could earn in an office ever could. We tickle and tousle, roughhouse and hug (squeeze) until we feel our hearts may burst, knowing our children are feeling that same simple, magical, unadulterated joy. We savor the moments when our children cradle our face in their tiny hands and whisper "you're pretty, Mama." We take mental photographs when our babies throw their heads back in the air and smile with the biggest, open-mouthed, dimpled grin we've ever seen simply because we are singing a song they love.
And sometimes it's just a miracle to have showered, brushed our teeth, and kept everyone under our care happy, safe, and alive.
And after all that, we have judgmental eyes nonchalantly vying to pierce us. Trying to discourage us. Trying to tell us what we're doing really isn't all that monumental, or that we could be doing it better. That decisions we've made for the precious souls Heavenly Father sent to us specifically, to be in our care, probably weren't very good...in their humble opinions.
Being a mom is the hardest job on the planet. And after giving it our absolute all, though we're exhausted yet inexplicably fulfilled, we have to deal with some who subtly or bluntly tell us that we could do better. It is time for moms in the trenches everywhere to remember that there is only one Opinion that matters, and hold onto that while we hold tightly to the babies He entrusted to us.
We can do hard things.
