This is my mom. The person she’s holding is me. She raised NINE such persons. I don’t know how she did it.

She means everything to me.

When I was a wee one she was the center of my universe. She could do no wrong. She was IT! The beginning and the end.  (Actually, she still is all of this to me, and more!)

And now, I am the center of the universe for two little girls of my own. I have kept another human being alive for the last seven months on food that my very body produced. Crazy!

Last night I was up three times. The highlight was at 3:30 AM when I was helping my seven month old with her constipation issues. Enough said.

If you’re a mom of little kids you know what I am talking about.

We are needed. Depended upon. When we’re around the world is bliss. When we are not around tears happen. Lots of tears.

I have thought a lot about what it means to be needed in this way. It is one of the things I most cherish about motherhood and one of the things that makes me want to get into my car and drive away… far, far away.

I love having so much purpose in my life, what I am doing really matters – loving these girls, teaching them, helping them make sense of the world, protecting them, celebrating life with them. It is beautiful – but it is also, as my friend Liesa put it, “freakishly hard”.

Little kids take, they take a lot, and they take it out of you. And as tiring as that can be it is also wonderful. I have thought about how, as an adult I have built up all kinds of protective walls that sometimes make it hard for me to receive love from others.  Children have no such walls. I wonder if this is part of what the Lord meant when he said that the kingdom of heaven was the heart of a child?

They are not afraid to recognize their dependence on us, they have no qualms about asking for what they need, they have no problem receiving our love.  The miracle of all their taking is how they give us SO MUCH back.

It is pretty dang cool, being a mom. I am sure grateful that I get to do this every day (even though I am so tired I think I am going to die).

I have put a this little slide show together in our honor – for moms everywhere, for you, for me… for all of us! And I had an absolute blast basking in the collective beauty of your lives. You and your kids make this look good.