A Tribute to Moms

Oh My!  The most challenging thing I have ever done is being a mom.  This is much more difficult than being a wife, being an employee, being a friend.  In the end it is the most rewarding, but along the way there have been many doubts.

My parenting journey is unusual.  My oldest was born weeks before I turned 20.  In the 80s that wasn't as far off the norm as it is now.  As a young mom I was a voracious reader of every parenting book or magazine that I could get my hands on.  My only goal was to give my children the best parenting that was humanly possible.  I had the strongest desire for making my children's lives wonderful, stronger than anything else I valued.

I was keenly aware of my flaws and failures.  When my first born was three days old I was holding her and she turned completely purple.  This came after she refused to sleep for three straight days unless we were on the couch.  In that moment I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this parenting thing would take all my heart and soul and that would never seem good enough.

This moment in time is seared into my brain for a number of reasons.  The baby was fine, but it took us a few months to get clearly vague information that she had a rare condition that made her perfusion inadequate when being held.  It was not life threatening and would go away as she grew.  Many other things came and went that were not life threatening, but brought mom a lot of sleepless nights.

As the children grew I continued to try my best.  However, I could tell you where every tiny flaw was in my parenting.  As teenagers, my children could tell me as well and took some sort of sorted joy out of recanting every mis-step.

They grew beyond those teenage years and began to tell me other things.  While they sometimes told me all the devious things they got away with as I was white knuckling it and trying to survive the teen years, they also told me really wonderful things.  As they entered into their twenties they began to see the heart of that new mother and not the actions of the one who was guiding them and shaping them against the grain of their teenage rebellion.

In that first round of parenting I don't think I would have dared asked the children what I was doing right.  They might not have been able to say and I certainly would not have been able to hear.  Now I mentioned that I am unusual in the realm of parenting, and I am.  The birth kids are all grown and out in the world and now we have the second set, the adopted kids.  The older set have prepared me for the younger ones.  Nothing prepared the younger ones for me.

I know that the younger ones love me and hate me all in the same breath, but when push comes to shove they wouldn't trade me for the world.  And how they feel about me on any given day doesn't matter nearly as much now as it did 20 years ago.  I love them all.  It might be surprising though what they would say about me when given  a camera and 30 seconds.  I like to think it would be a lot like the kids in the video.

Here is to all the moms out there!  Keep up the great work!  As a friend used to always say, "today isn't pay day" but oh when pay day comes it will surely be sweet!