Here’s to the mothers.

Here’s to the boo-boo kissers.

Here’s to the get up and warm the milk at 2am women. You are braver than you know.

You make the music that makes the life that gives the rhythm to the day in and out and in again.

Courageous.

You deliver babies by C-section or adoption certificate or by push and pant and wailing battle cry of birth.

You give more than you think you have.

And when you’re empty, when you’re bone dry you wring out one more drop, one more bottle, one more soothing the temper tantrum.

Hero.

You make a budget stretch. You clip coupons. You fight ketchup stains.

You face the awkward parent-teacher moments. You listen. You translate for your child. You do the hard work of teaching at every turn. You find a hundred new ways to answer a hundred new versions of the question, “Why?”

Champion.

You show up. You take photos. You cheer.

You shuttle boys and bags of gear between sports fields and serve up ice cream afterwards.

You disagree with him, you make her change her skirt, but you love fiercely from beneath those unruly bangs. You learn to laugh at your reflection.

You revel in your smiley wrinkles.

Real.

You lose your temper. You yell and apologize and stamp your foot and prove that you are human. You cry.

You venture out into an ocean of vulnerability with only a small dinghy and two short oars to keep you afloat when you become a parent.

Anchor.

You yield your figure, your abs, your size 4 jeans but your will turns to muscle unheard of; it grows heavy with determination.

No one will wound these children without going through you first.

You are a last harbor.

A lighthouse in the storm of Internet and Facebook and failed grades and peer pressure.

But in the everydayness of those moments, you start to feel it—the weight of glory, the glorious ordinary.

And on your quietest, least interesting days, you get better at hearing the music of motherhood.

Slowly, a harmony rises from the collection of tasks every mother cycles through in a day—this sacred marriage of the mundane and the eternal.

The small directly related to the massive. Kids walking around like so much eternity with skin on.

There is no. part. of. your. everyday, wash-and-rinse-and-repeat routine. that. isn’t. significant.

You make the music that makes the life that gives the rhythm to the day in and out and in again.

You are braver than you know.

Because you mother.

 

{For the video version of this post, click here}.

{For the free printable quote from this post, click here to save and download}

Happy Mother’s Day, friends! There is NOTHING ordinary about what you do. Today and every day.