I Know a Mom

I cried most of the way home from school drop-off to a friend a few weeks ago. 

“I wish others would talk about how hard motherhood can be,” I told her. 

She's a mom to littles, and I'm a mom to teens, a tween, and a toddler. Our “hard” looks different, but it’s there, and we never know what circumstances (or tantrums) will bring us to our knees. 

It’s embarrassing and gut-wrenching to share thoughts with a friend you never expected to experience as a mom. It’s easy to commiserate about potty training at a playdate, but it’s isolating when dealing with character and heart struggles. The older your kids get, the lonelier motherhood feels. Emotional and mental exhaustion replaces physical exhaustion.

My mom always says, “This too shall pass,” but today, I feel alone. Yet I’m not, because I know a mom.  

I know a mom who hasn’t slept through the night in years. 

I know a mom who doesn’t know what her child’s diagnosis means for their future. 

I know a mom struggling to decide if her child should have the surgery or not. 

I know a mom parenting alone while her husband is deployed. 

I know a mom who didn’t plan on raising her kids alone, but infidelity tore her marriage apart. 

I know a mom who feels guilty about not enjoying her child’s company. 

I know a mom who gets embarrassed when her child struggles to share. 

I know a mom praying her child who turned to addiction and a life on the streets will one day choose sobriety. 

I know a mom who fears she enabled her child to become the adult they have, and there is nothing she can do to change it. 

I know a mom who labored all night alone and then made the hardest decision of her life as she placed her child for adoption. 

I know a mom who thought she took every precaution she could, only to learn that her child encountered the very thing she thought she had protected them from. 

I know a mom, three actually, who buried their adult children this year.

“You’ll miss it.” 

“It goes fast.”

“Don’t blink.”

If I could count the times I heard this as I tried to wrangle three littles through a grocery store. And it was hard to believe I would miss trying to keep my five-year-old from putting my three-year-old in a chokehold. And I bet my three-year-old didn’t think it was fast enough. And blinking didn’t change the baby’s diaper, which needed attention as I tried to check out.

I wish others would talk about how hard motherhood can be; I had told my friend that morning.

Maybe they did. Perhaps those couple of words I’ll admit I let get under my skin years ago were their pleas. At some point, the grocery store chaos becomes a sweet simplicity of the past, the hard you wish you were facing.

I recognized something about myself recently. It’s easy for me to look back at wilderness seasons or seasons of waiting and know God was teaching me something new, reminding me of who He is, and growing me. But somehow, when it comes to motherhood’s hard times, I forget He is doing the same.

I don’t know what your hard in motherhood is today, but I’ve been a mom long enough to know you’ve experienced something difficult this week. I also know you might feel alone. I wanted you to know you aren’t, I know a mom.