“Mother”. What a beautiful word. What an honor and a privilege to be given the ability to produce another life. We become a Mom from the moment of conception until the end of either our lives, or tragically, sometimes theirs. 

Remember when you saw those 2 pink lines on your pregnancy test? Yeah, me too, and I actually have mine tucked away in a ziplock bag in a keepsake box:) Yeah, I’m THAT mom. The one who has to keep every little thing that plays a part in her child’s existence as if its some puzzle piece I can’t loose as if it’s a part of my memory that will disappear if I do.

After I tested  positive,  I immediately placed both hands on my stomach as if to cradle my tiny growing daughter and quietly say, “Hey, this is your Mommy”. I just knew she would be perfect and so of course I bought all the books and almost caused google to crash. I had the preggo apps on my phone, you name it. I wanted to know exactly what she was doing each month and what parts were forming at the exact moment in time and so on and so forth. I was obsessed. I would post things on FB like, “She has toes today!”

I was already a die hard health nut as it was, but as soon as I knew I was a Mom, BAM crazy town Mom took health to a whole other level! Isn’t it funny how we moms have those protection instincts right from the get-go? Everything from what kind of music is soothing to the baby to checking the mercury levels on every type fish on the planet before it comes anywhere near your mouth! Grocery store runs turn into 3 hour trips because you have to google every ingredient you can’t pronounce to make sure its safe to eat.

We all wanted to be that perfect mom. We had this 9 month ongoing movie playing over in our heads of how life with our little one was going to play out. Toddler running towards you in slow-mo, big smile, open arms,…you know the one (like a Pampers commercial). Then you fast forward to pre-school, then middle school where you’re beating up bullies (but wait, you won’t have to worry about bullies because you’re kids the ‘cool kid’ phew, but wait, what if your kid is the bully!?), then off to college, and before you know it you’ve already got them married off to some famous celebrity after they’ve graduated Harvard with a docterate in brain surgery briefly preceding their campaigning for the presidency and your still in your first trimester throwing up that well- done hamburger you just had for dinner (grass-fed of course)! Geez! No wonder we get so exhausted, we can plan an entire life in about T minus 5 minutes!

Next thing ya know, your water breaks, you think you’ve pee’d on yourself…Again. Pain starts, screams sound like you’re being murdered by the hospital staff (in my case I had zero pain killers,s so yeah, Ouch.) Then you hear the cry of that little human you and God have been so carefully building all this time and your screams of pain are replaced with smiles and tears of overwhelming happiness and thankfulness as your baby looks at you and you just know he/she is thinking…”So, you’re my Mommy, I love you so much”. Of course they are probably just wondering where the milk is but I’d like to live in my little Hallmark world for a moment. 

Your child was perfect, just as you knew they would be. They were ‘Fearfully and wonderfully made’ just exactly how they should be. You’ve worried about them, prayed for them, hugged and kissed them, and cried over them too many times to count. You’ve kissed boo-boo’s, wiped green snot, got pee’d on, cleaned up poop from weird places (in my case, the bath tub). We do crazy little dances in public to cheer them up. Promise them candy they’ll never get if they just “be good this once”. You’ve watched them sleep and checked their pulse just to make sure they were breathing properly. We’ve replaced days of sleep with prayers as we kneel on cold NICU floors begging God, “Please don’t take my baby just yet”. You’ve sang to them, read to them, snuggled them, and loved them UNCONDITIONALLY. That’s what we do. We are Mothers. Entrusted with another humans life from the Creator of life itself. So yeah, no pressure right Moms? 

We will make mistakes, we will do the wrong things, we will say the wrong things, and we avoid messing up like the plague because we only want the best for our kids, and nothing else will do and anything less than that makes us feel like we have failed in some way but still we try our best. We push forward and do what we must to give our children the best lives imaginable. We stress and push ourselves until we are like walking dead “Mombies” just to make sure that last tiny piece of crust is cut from the sandwich or that the one tooth our kid has is brushed til it shines like a diamond. We are multi-taskers and are doing 50 different things at any given millisecond. We can make tears dry up with just one ‘Mommy’s all better kiss”. We are a force to be reckoned with if need be. We can be the ‘worlds best room-mother’; and just bless your little heart, but if you mess with our kids, well…we can turn into a whole other kind of mother. We are what we have to be at any given moment. It seems like we are constantly saving their lives. I thought the whole finger in the light socket thing was just an old wives tale, but no, Hannah has actually tried to do that. We save them from walking into tables, from falling down (or up) the stairs, the list goes on and on…

If you really think about it, our kids have super heros for Moms. How awesome is that? I mean, we may not be saving the world (God sent Jesus to do that so we can all relax on that one) however, we do have a responsibility to “Train up a child in the way he should go..” (Pro. 22:6) . We do our part and let God do the rest:)

HAPPY MOTHERS DAYS MOMMIES! I hope you guys laughed, cried, nodded, and maybe even hugged your kids extra tight and told them how blessed you are to be their mom. Some moms reading this aren’t able to do that anymore and by the same token, some sons and daughters visit a grave on Mothers Day. Some moms are wishing they still had a mess to clean up or a runny nose to wipe or a sibling rivalry to calm.  So lets cherish our precious moments even if they are crazy moments, and take mom/kid selfies til your phones go dead this Mothers Day:) You are all precious to me. Keep up the good work Moms, we are all turning out pretty darn great:)