The Other Side of Mother's Day

On Mother's Day, when we seek to honor those who gave us life - and are being honored by those to whom we gave life - many of us mothers feel uncomfortable. We feel the inadequacy of our own best efforts to be perfect mothers and we see our faults and imperfections more than our successes.

This Mother's Day, I'm thinking about my beautiful daughters, without whom I wouldn't be a mother. It has been an honor to be entrusted with the care of those sweet babies. What a satisfying, and often challenging, experience to watch them grow from dependent babies to bright, busy, and creative toddlers and children, into beautiful ladies. From them I have learned (and am still learning) patience, diplomacy, gentleness, humility, resourcefulness, goodness, and faith, among other things.

I believe they have taken to heart the following ideas expressed by Margaret D. Naudald.

"Women of God can never be like women of the world. The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity."

These daughters are my first descendants and links in a continuing chain that extends back in time and will extend forward into the future as they become wives and mothers. I am filled with gratitude to know that these women, my daughters, personify the attributes of courage, faith, determination, tenderness, kindness, gentleness, virtue, beauty, and purity. I wish for them the blessings of motherhood with its unnumbered challenges, opportunities, and blessings. And I am grateful to be their mother.