Choosing Motherhood Again

Motherhood is definitely not for wimps. When you’re pregnant your body turns into a science fair project only you’re not in charge of the hypothesis, experiment or outcome. After the baby gets here, you’re sucked on, pooped on, spit on, chewed on and wet on. Then later you get kicked, punched, screamed at, disobeyed and run away from. You eat cold meals, wear stained clothes and never get any sleep. When your children are finally old enough to help you, they won’t. When they’re teenagers they ask you to hide in your bedroom when their friends come over. When they leave for college they only call home when they want something.
So why in the world do we do it? We choose to be a mother because if we didn’t - children would die or never be born. Society would cease to exist. The world as we know it would come to an end. I know of no other life’s work that can make that claim.
I firmly believe that those who do the most good in this world are often invisible and receive the least credit or payment. Mothers are like that. They are too busy planting and nourishing to contemplate the eventual harvest. Yet, if we give our whole hearts to the growing season we will someday reap a return of souls who will feed the world with the love they’ve known.
When governments, financial institutions and nations fail, mothers offer the answers – brand new people wrapped in flannel. We give the world fresh human beings with novel ideas, unique talents and answers to age old problems. For we have chosen not to put ourselves first. We have chosen to be the stewards of a new generation. We have chosen to be the moral earth where the rising generation’s roots can sink deep in time honored values. We have chosen to offer our time, our talents and everything we have so that our children can grow up knowing there will always be a smile in the audience, forgiving arms to return to and a push of encouragement when they need to fly.
No community or nation will survive without us. We feed the hungry, clothe the naked and house the homeless. It doesn’t matter if anyone else, including our own spouse and children appreciate us, if we do. For when we grasp a glimpse of what is means to be a mother and how our actions or failure to act will affect thousands for generations, we will never undervalue our contribution again.
Motherhood frees us to love someone more than our self and gives a dimension of sacredness to everything we do. Motherhood frees us from selfishness and creates a gentler world where someone is always looking out for the children. Motherhood frees us of from a life of get and offers us a life of give.
After years and years of nurturing, feeding, hugging reading and cleaning, we will be granted the ability to love and the opportunity to be loved. Our hearts will open to the value of another human being in ways we do not now comprehend. We are transformed as we transcend self. So on those hard days, choose motherhood again with even greater tenderness, and commitment. I absolutely promise you that every sacrifice you make for your child will contain your life’s greatest meaning, every choice to love, your life’s greatest purpose.