What Only Mothers Do.

I used to be afraid of the thought of becoming a mother.

Something my mother has always told me is that "your mission changes when you become a mother." The goals, desires, and dreams you once had, don't necessarily die, but they now become filtered through the best interest of your children. A mother's goal, a mother's hope, a mother's dream, her job, her ministry, and life purpose become for her children.

She gives up her own desires. The things that were once important to her are now of no consequence comparable with the lives of her family.

I was afraid of the thought of giving everything up; all my desires, all my hobbies, all "MY" life, and relaxation that I imagined would ultimately come to an end for my children. The thought that I would rarely do anything that I enjoyed made me nervous.

Of course, I knew it was selfish, but I was still afraid of the thought of being trapped into decades of unending selflessness.

I would consider how I like to write and paint.

I would not have as much time to write books with children. I doubted I would have the opportunity to paint often.

And that thought did help me to appreciate my mother more.

Looking back on the child I was also makes me appreciate my mother. Somehow, she always loved, she was always patient. Each and every single long, exhausting, painful day. Day after day after day—she didn't "deal with me." No.

Day after day after day . . . She loved me.

And that is a beautiful thing.

However, That alone is not what makes a mother so indescribably incredible.

The value of endless devotion; the exceptionally weighty time it takes to sacrifice her own desires for the life and sanity of another; the perseverance, the patience, the steadfastness it takes to simply—simply—do, behave, think, and act in the way that is best for the wellbeing of her children, over, and over, and over again, continually, is alone not what makes motherhood something incomparable with anything else in this world.

This is a value of the character of a mother, but yet, mothers have the power to do something that none other can physically accomplish.

On a slightly different note, I quickly realized that the pains and efforts, and cares, and daily tasks that were important to me at fifteen years old, would become like an empty vapor in no time at all. By the time I was thirty, I might remember one or two significant memories I made as a teenager or young adult, but everything else would be as nothing. It would be empty and void; a passing moment of my lifetime; a small, simple thought "I suppose I was a child once."

I enjoy writing books. However, not only will the novel I am writing right now die when this world does, but it will die as soon as I turn an age older and move onto another project.

I realized, not all, but many things in my life would die away. They were vain. There were a lot of things—though they were certainly significant aspects of my life and personality—they ultimately did not mean as much as I seemed to think.

My parents told me it sounded like a midlife crisis. I suddenly knew what King Solomon felt like; all is vanity.

Many people have come to the realization that we humans spend numerous hours per day, and dozens and dozens of weeks, stressing, and building, constructing, and molding things that are absolutely meaningless.

I will complain to my best friend about the numerous struggles I am having with a current project I am working on. I will discuss the endless efforts and pains of being an author. I will consider whether or not I ever really will publish this book; whether I will have the time or motivation to finish it.

But next year, I won't care. Not about this specific project.

In schoolwork I work on a project extensively, stressfully, painstakingly—I work hard with the short due-date, I stress over it each and ever day. Not only wondering whether or not I will submit it on time, but whether or not I will do well—if it will be given not only a passing grade, but an excellent grade. I work on it as if this weighty project will be the ultimate projection on which my degree hangs in the balance. I work on it extensively, exhausting myself with my own stress. I can't go anywhere or do anything because of this assignment. I am working, and working, and suffering

—for half a week.

I submit it. Then I go back to the common assignments that I work on in my day-to-day life, that nearly bore me.

Afterward I may proceed to express how boring schoolwork can really be.

Only to recall that I will be in my mid-twenties, early thirties, into my forties, fifties, sixties, and one day I will be one-hundred-and-two and far beyond ready to leave this world—and school will be a small, meaningless effort that every young child goes through, that was so long ago I can hardly even remember what it felt like.

Do not misinterpret me as I express this. These things in our lives are important, and they come together to make up part of who we are. They matter. But they are not eternal.

You see, this leads me to realize, not quite that all is vanity, but that many of our petty stresses and desires will die when this world does. But quite frankly, they will die long before this world does. They will die before our children do. Before we do. They may die in a time as miniscule as a single night.

How does this have to do with mothers?

The reality can bring both a sense of crisis, and of peace, and of conviction.

The reality that all these little things cannot and will not last forever. The time that are our lives, and the time of thousands of generations to be alive on this earth will eventually amount to less than a speck of nothing stranded somewhere in the midst of the vast space that is eternity.

Our school is not eternal.

Our animals are not eternal.

Our vehicles are not eternal.

Our hobbies are not eternal.

Our occupations are not eternal.

Our entertainment is not eternal.

Our world is not eternal.

None of these things last. None of these are eternal things.

These things are not meant to last forever; they do not need to.

But it stands to show that the dozens of small efforts that seem so important right now

will vanish into a vague memory, like that inside a dream, that the image of the recollection is hazy, and difficult to piece together.

But one revelation that comes with this understanding,

Is the power given to a mother.

Mothers do something that no one else does.

Not only do mothers lay aside all selfishness for someone else, for life,

but Mothers Build Eternal Things.

Mothers forget the vanities and stresses that fall away into the darkness of the world. Mothers sacrifice time, after time, after time; they give away effort, after effort, after effort, asking for nothing in return.

So they can, instead, pour their souls and lives into something that will last forever.

The gift of motherhood is far more than making life, it is far more than for the purpose of birth and reproduction.

The gift, is that a woman gets to construct something timeless.

She makes a way for souls to enter into this world, and perhaps build other eternal things as well.

She pours her life, her time—she gives up her hobbies, and thousands of selfish vanities—so she can devote herself into preparing something that will last forever.

Life.

Mothers expand heaven.

Mothers are gifted the authority to make an impact that no one else can.

Mothers have the ability to inspire.

Mothers have the gift to change lives, and the world.

Mothers do not just create life.

Bodily life itself is not what is eternal.

My mother created my physical life—she and my father.

They were able to make me, as both a gift and the greatest struggle of their lives, simultaneously. But they didn't just create life.

My mother poured—and when I say poured, I mean pieces of herself breaking apart, liquifying, spilling out and over, flowing with abundance—Into me, onto me, around me, drowning me.

Mothers and fathers are different. My father built me with blocks of himself. As strong as cement bricks, as hard as diamonds, block after block from inside of him, he constructed me.

But my mother poured her heart out and kept me together.

Every day with all my vanities, she kept me together.

She led me, she looked at me, for me, and with me; she taught me.

She did better than preserve me, shelter me, and feed me.

She held onto who I was, so that I could—and can—grow to become something that will last to the end of this life and into eternity.

While mothers aren't necessarily the change that happens in other people—they facilitate the change that needs to take place. The kind of change that no human can perform. They provide an environment fit for that change, they craft a lifestyle, and love, and enforcement, and discipline, to facilitate the best path of growth possible.

And THAT is what rolls over into eternity.

If "day after day" or "day in and day out" means anything, Mothers know. Mothers know more than anyone else.

They deal with other, growing, changing, insecure, learning, searching, breaking humans, while at the same time, tending to their own character.

The stress of being a good wife, a good servant, a good friend, and a good mother is constantly prying at their hearts. Because the calling to motherhood is a tasking responsibility. It is a calling that requires high standards of character and of living. They must constantly prepare themselves, so they can also prepare their children. They must repair themselves, so they can tend to their children when they crack, and break, and fall apart, and need—desperately, pitifully need—healing.

But they are constantly in the process of investing in and building other humans,

other people,

other servants,

other ministers,

other wives,

other husbands,

other friends,

other caregivers,

other lives, that will last forever.

They invest, for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years—and usually more—of every day, every hour, every minute, and moment of effort,

For something that will never die.

So, if you wonder, "What does a Mother really do?"

"What does my Mother really do?"

Mothers Build Eternal Things.