mothering

So yesterday, I read these words in Melody's post on Brave Girls Club:
"Think hard about all of the ways that you have loved your children the VERY BEST WAY THAT YOU KNOW HOW TO LOVE THEM….and that YOU have just flat out done THE VERY BEST THAT YOU COULD DO……..and that you continue to do that every day."

Needless to say, I was a mess after reading that. There's more on her honest-to-the-bone blog post that will resound with your spirit and make tears slide down your cheeks HERE. Please read it. I'll wait.

No, really..... I will. 

Go ahead. It's just five minutes of reading, and You won't regret it.

We've all been children, some with mothers and some without. Some of us are mothers. Some want to be, with all their hearts.

At some point in our lives, when we each figure out that being a mother is the toughest job on earth, and there is no test to pass, no license to be issued, no book of regulations or guidelines to follow, no training course to prepare us, and no awards given at the end, then we start to get the picture. 

This mother gig? 

It's all by the seat of our pants, on the fly, pull-it-out-of-the-air hopefulness, gals. 

We all do the best we can with what we've got on any (every) given day. 

We all love and raise our kids giving it everything we've got - even on days when we don't think we can. Even when we don't have the slightest clue how to help them out of a situation, or over an obstacle. Once we get them over the fear of the monsters in the dark closet, we have to figure out how to help them stand up for themselves and others against the monster bully at school. Once we help them learn how to walk, and then run, we have to help them grow up independently so they can just keep on walking AWAY FROM US. Because that's our job: to raise strong, good, independent people who grow up and start their own lives.

When we got stuck as a mom, wondering 'well what the HECK do I do NOW?' , what did we do?

We called Mom. 

Or Grandma... our 'other mom'. 

Or a friend who is a mom, too. (Usually the one who seems to 'have it all together' - and then laughs hysterically when we actually speak those words to her because she knows NO ONE has it all together)

And we tried every word of advice, every suggestion, every trick in the book to potty train that stubborn toddler or reason with the surly pre-teen daughter. We lost thousands of hours of sleep (but never any weight... why IS that?) over missed curfews and first dates and overnighters.

We used everything we had at our disposal to be 'Good Mommies' and raise good kids.

Hope springs eternal in the minds and hearts of Mothers, and we can endure anything in the process of raising our kids because it's how we are wired. Remember 'Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things'*? 

That's Motherhood.
It's what we DO.

My mom and my grandma did all those things. I did all those things. Two of my daughters are doing those things now. Giving it their all, in the face of sometimes overwhelming odds.

Some of us look back, and think we didn't do a very good job of it after all.
We have regrets about our choices, and our methods, and we wonder if we had just done a few things differently, would things be better for us and for our kids now?

I am very proud of my four kids for a lot of reasons, but I've been having a lot of those thoughts over the past two and a half months. They learned some very good and some very BAD things from me, and I sure wish I could change the latter. But I can't go back. I can only go forward, loving them more than life itself, wanting to protect them and help them grow in understanding - even though they are between 25 and 31 years of age now. I cannot 'mother' them any longer, but I will always be their Mom.

I got a text from three of my four grown children today, wishing me a Happy Mother's Day.
That is SO much more than I have even hoped for during the past two months, with our relationships being completely estranged after I left their father in March. But I am grateful for the gestures, and can wait for it to all work out between us. It's hard, and it's painful, but I can hang in there.

Of course I can.

I am a Mom.

It's what we DO.

Happy Mother's Day, friends... and thank you for the insight, Mom.

* I Corinthians 13:7