I was not a perfect mother to my five little children. I lost my temper more than I wanted to, and a couple of times my husband and I lost a slow-footed child for a few minutes in the Mall - gratefully retrieved at various stores. I unwittingly colored white clothing pink in the wash. I fell asleep in the middle of reading bedtime stories, so that my kids had to wake me up to finish the ending. I didn't re-sew every loose button.
None of us mothers are perfect, and we know it. We know how often we lose our tempers - and our minds - because of exhaustion, nervousness, and heavy burdens of responsibility.
But we also, as mothers of young ones, get things monumentally right. In spite of our exhaustion, we get them to school, mostly on time. We make sure they have clothes to wear, even though they grow through several sizes in a season and sometimes pants or shirtsleeves are too short for a couple of months till a friend gives us clothes or our budget allows new purchases. (My son Paul, when young, swore that I shrank his pants in the dryer, even though he KNEW he was growing!)
I have wonderful memories of little fingers helping me make and decorate Christmas cookies and my helping them design and color home-made cards for family members. I remember making their favorite meals for their birthdays. I remember filling five little Easter baskets with carefully counted out chocolate bunnies and marshmallow chicks and jelly beans at past midnight. And being more delighted than they were when they excitedly unwrapped a Christmas present and then jumped around the room with joy.
No matter how imperfect we are some of the time, we know we get it right more of the time. Why? Because we love them, every inch of their bodies and souls. And Love knows how to say "I love you" every day. Love knows how to say "I'm sorry." Respecting the dignity of my children, I never hesitated to say I was sorry when I lost my temper or was in the wrong. And they forgave me. And I gave them forgiveness when they apologized for things they said and did.
And, acknowledging our own sinfulness and mistakes to our God in daily prayer and, if your Church allows, in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, strengthens us for that daily journey of growing in our relationships.
Raising our children, next to building our marriage - or being a courageous single parent - is the most important mission in our lives. Because each child is a gift to us and a gift to the world from God. In each child's life, God is saying something new and irreplaceable to the world. We raise them well not only for them and for ourselves, but for the world. And so we tell them daily, in a thousand, thousand different ways, how special they are, how much God loves them, how much good they can do for others. That they're being on this planet is not an accident but the result of our love and God's Divine Purpose.
A child who knows, soul deep, that he is a much-loved child of his family and his God has an inner peace and security that carries him through the daily trials of school, and eventually the daily trials of work and then his or her own marriage. Sometimes we don't get them off to school peacefully. But then it is always in our power to pray and meditate for our own inner peace and then welcome them home peacefully.
If we pray daily, we can pray that we are able to give them this gift: trust in God, trust in their family's love, trust in themselves. And we also pray for ourselves, that God, Who daily makes all things new, will re-make us new each day for the challenging task He gives us. As Pope Francis says, "God asks everything of us, yet at the same time He offers everything to us."
"Taking a child, he (Jesus) placed it in their midst, and putting his arms around it, he said to them, 'whoever receives one child such as this in My Name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me, but the One Who sent me.'" (Mark 9: 36-37.)