Tomorrow

Tomorrow is Mother's Day, and I couldn't possibly be more excited. I've wanted to be a mom since I was a little girl, and I don't know that there is a more fulfilling, scary, joyful, challenging, exhausting, life-giving role on earth.

Now that I'm a mom, I appreciate my mom like never before. I truly believe that you cannot fully understand your parents until you are one. Nearly every day, I think, How did Mom do all this!? And then I pause, am encouraged, and think, If Mom could do this, then I can do this. She is a constant encourager and presence, even when I'm not around her. I think of all the times she had to drive for hours listening to screaming, all the bows she had to tie and scraped knees she had to bandage, all the sleepless nights, giving birth FOUR times, getting up every single morning to pack our lunches, balancing driving us back and forth between piano-ballet-volleyball-oops! Mom, I left my book at school-softball-cheerleading-gymnastics-tennis-on-and-on, tucking me in every night, always making me feel unconditionally loved and cherished. I have learned so much from my mother about how to be a wonderful mom. I still hear her advice ringing in my head when I encounter situations day to day. Thank you, Mom.

I will never forget when I stared down at the floor at the pregnancy test and saw it there: pregnant. I walked, weak-kneed, into the bedroom, and literally collapsed in my husband's arms with tears of pure joy streaming down my face. I was going to be a mother. I was going to be a mother. I was going to be a mother! I felt so blessed and so excited.

I needed to write these things down today, because the fact is that motherhood is enormously rewarding and enormously exhausting. I have barely slept in the past five days, and the little one has just about been driving me loco. I needed to stop and remember what I wrote in my Mommy Journal one year ago:

Dear Tiny,

      Today is Mother's Day, and I've been thinking about you all day! I can't wait to see your face, hear you laugh, and hold you in my arms. I love you!

                                         Love always, Mom

As tired and as much as I'd like to rip my hair out and go to bed for the next 24 hours, I still remember the moment when I held my precious son in my arms and felt his warmth against me for the very first time. I love being a mom more than anything else in my life other than loving and serving my precious Lord. Thank You, God, for the blessing of children! Thank you for the tears, heartache, exhaustion, joy, love, laughter! Thank You for using my son to show me, more than anything else, just how much You truly cherish me.