Motherhood

I always longed to be a mother.  When motherhood seemed impossible to attain, I was heartbroken.  God has called me to be a mother and I've always known that and desired that.

Becoming a mother has been everything I thought it would be and more.  And it has been more challenging than thought it would be.  The blessings are abundant.  And so are the challenges.

We are abundantly blessed to be a part of a parish filled with young, conservative, holy Catholic families.  Our "group" as we often call it has more children than I can count.  They are wonderful witnesses to the beautiful of marriage and new life.

On Wednesday nights, a group of us moms meet and we're generally reading some kind of spiritual book together and discussing it.  Right now we're almost finished with Kimberley Hahn's "Graced and Gifted."  It's been such a fruitful book for me, it has really been huge in setting my priorities straight here at home and allowing me to create an organized and fruitful routine here at home.  Throughout this book we've had a variety of guest speakers come.  All moms, all with children who are grown.  They're in the "been there, did that, done that" stage and have much to offer to those of us in the trenches of mothering young children.

We've asked them questions and we've gained beautiful insights from them on how to be better mothers and spouses.  We've grown as mothers through this process and it has been so beautiful to hear from these women about their own journey as mothers.

But for me, perhaps the most glaring thing that I've taken from all of this seems so simple.  Motherhood is hard.  There is no easy tip or trick that will make it all fall into place.  It's constantly changing.  Children are all unique and require different things at different times.  We have asked these mothers to come speak because we see their success.  We see their grown children actively practicing their faith.  We see mothers who pray and have a sense of peace about them.  We see them at daily Mass and Adoration.  We see them as mothers who succeeded in raising their children to be holy and to know, love and serve God.

Despite our view of their lives as mothers, they've all said the same thing.  They don't have any easy answers.  They definitely made mistakes.  They didn't have it all together.  Prayer was often hard to fit in.  Daily Mass was not always attainable.  They needed the support of seasoned mothers just like we do.

And that has been a huge comfort to me.  There are days when I feel like all I accomplished was keeping the kids alive and fed.  I feel like I failed.  And then I look at the woman who spoke to us this week.  A woman I've always looked up to, she is my confirmation sponsor.  She has 7 beautiful children.  And she didn't have it all together.  She had bad days.  She didn't take her kids to daily Mass.  She didn't always make the time to pray.  And yet 5 minutes with her and you feel holier for just having been in her presence. 

It's not about successes and failures.  It's not about my daily schedule being fulfilled perfectly each day.  It's about caring for these children that God has so generously blessed us with.  It's about loving God and having a relationship with Him so that our children see that and want that for themselves.  It's about modeling our faith and teaching our children to serve and to love.

So basically, I'm feeling much better about my attempts to raise my children to hopefully one day become Saints.  I don't have it all together.  And I probably never will.  But each day I take little baby steps towards knowing, loving, and serving God.  And each day I bring my children a little bit closer to Heaven.  Each day is an opportunity to show them how to love.