Tell your mom she's pretty

This month was Mother's Day, so we're talking about the importance of recognizing moms.

Happy May! This is the month of recognizing mental health, graduations, summer wedding season kickoff, and moms :)

In the recent years, I've heard a lot of people highlight that this holiday brings up more pain than joy for some.

Many people don't physically have their mom on earth anymore, others have a strained relationship with theirs, and then are the women who have been waiting to be a mom for a long time.

I hear you, but sometimes I fear that keeping too much in mind the potential for hurt, takes away from the importance of celebrating and recognizing the moms who, in my opinion, absolutely deserve to be celebrated and honored. Moms sacrifice more than we will ever understand-- I feel like I've only gotten a taste of what this looks like watching my friends have babies and volunteering with children's ministry at church.

When I even just begin to think about the sacrifices my mom made every single day for over 21 years, I think about how the least I could do was for one day a year, honor and serve her a fraction of the amount she has served me. I'm not a mama right now, but the older I get the more I start to see all the big and little sacrifices my mom, as well as many others, made.

Consider the very beginning of motherhood; Moms sacrifice their own bodies to grow you-- something probably only women will understand on a deeper level of what this means. It's no secret that a major part of a woman's success is in her physical body. The desire (and pressure!) to be physically beautiful and desirable according to society's unfair, impossible standards is essentially completely thrown away, not to mention her physical (and mental) comfort as well.

As a baby miraculously grows in their mom's belly, organs get squished, pinched, moved around, while skin incredibly expands and the levels of discomfort rise with every passing week. Pregnant moms experience shortness of breath, pain in her joints, and despite all the latest contraptions, a lack of sleep due to discomfort, to name just a few.

The intensity of hormone changes and expansion of her body leading her to have a hard time even feeling like herself is a major sacrifice of comfort that she undergoes to bring you into the world. Sometimes it takes years for a woman's body to go "back to the way it was" if it ever even does, and I don't even need to go into the sacrifices she makes during birth...

I've heard people say, "I didn't ask her to bring me into this world," and to that I say well she didn't specifically ask for you either. She had no idea who you were going to be, but she chose to sacrifice all things mentioned above and more because without knowing you, she decided you were worth it.

Once her baby is born, the things she sacrificed for the 9 months leading up to this moment don't even compare to what she sacrifices now that her baby is here. For the first few years of her baby's life, she sacrifices just about everything. Sleep, career, friends, routine, free time, finances, even her body all revolve around her baby's needs.

If anyone has ever wondered why moms are so tired, especially if she's a mom of little ones, she's probably performing all her duties as mom, wife, housekeeper, cook, and most times employee on very little sleep. She sacrificed her ability to freely go out to eat, spend time with friends, take a vacation, take a shower(!), get ready for the day, exercise, nap, treat herself or even spend an hour to herself because she knew you needed her.

Growing up, I think about all the ways my mom sacrificed and put us first in her life. She had the option to significantly climb the corporate ladder at work, but she declined the offer so she could stay more present at home. I think back to when she routinely spent most, if not all, of her "fun money" (for a cup of tea, or a new shirt) on me and my sister.

A memory we all share, that I didn't realize was a sacrifice until over a decade later, is when my sister and I would cozy up in our mom's bed late on a week night and just talk and talk and talk. We didn't understand the exhaustion our mom had from commuting into the city for work, working a full day, coming home to make dinner and clean up, spend time with us and then go to bed to wake up at 5:00am to do the same thing all over again.

We had no business talking about our feels, processing what happened earlier that day, and sharing what was on our hearts 5 hours before our mom had to get up to go to work! But she never told us to leave or go to bed. When I asked her why she never told us to let her sleep because she was exhausted from the same shenanigans the night before, she said "because I loved those special sacred moments, and it was worth it."

Moms, you're incredible. The ones who sacrificed more than we'll ever understand, the ones who stand in the gap praying for and over their children, and the things you do to support us when we're grown don't come with the right words to thank you.

My mom is the reason I understood from a very young age who Jesus was personally to me. And I'll never be able to repay her for that. So whether it's Mother's Day or not, honor your mom for the things you'll never understand she did. Tell your mom she's pretty, that you love her, and I hope all moms felt recognized and thanked this Mother's Day.

Thanks for reading :)

“When a woman gives birth, she has pain because her time has come. But when the child is born, she no longer remembers her distress because of her joy that a child has been born into the world." John 16:2: