I believe that we are all of us are called to mother another.

We mother the world that shows up at our doorstep whether we call it mothering or not.

We mother whether we’re married or we’ve ever borne down in the battle cry of birth.

We mother because we’re called to it – this flinging a life preserver to a drowning sister, child, college student, teenager, grandmother with the soft, wafer thin skin, or that kid who always shows up at your backdoor the second you’ve turned off the ignition.

We mother because we can’t not.

Because there are friends in the cubicle next to us who have been hurt and need a soft, safe place to come undone. We mother because we’ve watched our grandmas make slow, determined soup for the sick. We mother because the next door neighbor can’t change her tire in the blistering March wind and of course we call AAA for her and wait and shuffle feet and rub cold hands because she asked for help. Because, of course.

This is what we women do.

We give ourselves away – little bits and pieces of who we are, of our courage, of our deep faith even on the nights we’re the most afraid. We bear down and we find ways to bring life to people desperate for air.

These are the women who continue to labor long after the children are born.

The women who remember to keep naming their progeny – joy and determination and grit and evangelization and Psalms and prophecy and preaching all the time between the waves of all this life that sometimes we slip and call, “ordinary.”

We mother and motherhood is its own mission field and no one is disqualified from serving.

Don’t believe me? Keep reading the rest of my story over on (in)courage today.

Just click here.