“Momming ain’t easy” – the phrase that launched 1,000 t-shirts (and mugs and lettered signs and totes and instagram posts).  As I sit here with my lukewarm coffee (because I couldn’t get to it this morning) and my recorded shows (because I couldn’t watch them live), I’m reminded in the smallest way that “momming ain’t easy.” 

     It’s waking up impossibly early because when else can you look your husband in the face without a certain small someone demanding all.the.things. It’s hiding your face when your toddler does something so terrible (that’s also hilarious). It’s drawing the line between terrible and hilarious and watching your toddler jump over it, stomp it, walk on it, and laugh. It’s reciting Little Blue Truck from memory 572,156,985 times. It’s the joy in seeing your baby run to you after a long day at work. It’s the heartbreak of knowing that you don’t have it all together and the desperate hope that your failures won’t be what shape his little heart.

          We have these days. We have these moments. We have this time. And it’s fleeting. Is it any wonder we’re so exhausted all the time? We’re doing everything we can to do as much as we can to do the best we can because we don’t get this back. We will always be moms, but we don’t always have this. That’s “momming.” That desperate feeling that’s a sort of mix of joy and fear and happiness and most of all love. Thinking of someone else from the minute your eyes open until they drift closed in the middle of that show you thought you would make it through.

     Motherhood is the best gift and the most challenging role. We know our babies like no one else on this earth, but we have to watch them grow into their own. Sometimes it’s the most rewarding thing I could ever imagine! That beautiful little boy who is so funny and smart and independent is really mine, and I get the joy of teaching him! Other times it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done. That wild little boy who is so loud and willfull and independent is really mine, and I get the job of disciplining him!

     We don’t get to separate our role into joy and fear. We claim it all and lay it at the feet of Jesus because He is the only One who can take this job and redeem our efforts. We aren’t doing this alone because He has equipped us with a team. We have husbands and sisters and mothers of our own. We have friends and leaders and mentors. We have resources of every kind, but most of all we have the Holy Spirit who empowers us and enables us and upholds us.

     I am so thankful that I don’t have to take on this task alone. My best efforts as a mother are absolute failure apart from Him. I am blessed beyond measure that this walk that is motherhood and life is not mine to do alone. I can “take captive every thought (and day and effort and failure) and make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). That is what He desires from me, that I take my whole life, motherhood included, and lay it at His feet as a sacrifice. A day to honor mothers is a beautiful thing, but how much more beautiful that we honor the Lord with our calling as mothers?