A Photo Fun Mother's Day Celebration

The gals at 5minutesformom.com are offering a great Mother's Day Giveway of $1,000 thanks to Egg Beaters via an American Express gift card! To make this contest as special as the prize, they decided to make it a Mother’s Day Photo Contest. On May 2nd, they will post the fifteen finalists along with a survey box for everyone to vote for their favorite.

While I have many tender shots with my own children, I have made it a policy to not publish pictures of their faces on my blog. But I love the idea of celebrating Mother's Day through looking out our photos, so I found these in my collection. They depict some of the most precious realities of being a mother, being a child, and being a spiritual mother for children all around us.

I look at this photo and am awed by God's amazing design of our bodies and the ability to carry two babies at once within my womb. I was at least 37 weeks at this point, and experiencing false labor, which at the time I thought was real, real, real. My mother-in-law, a former labor and delivery nurse, zipped on over to stay with the girls while we went the hospital. But before the docs could lay a hand on me, she had to check on her little grandbabes.



I believe these two photos will become like the well-turned corner of a favorite page in my love story about motherhood. They are recent shots from when I cared for my friend's daughters for five days -- an adventure I had never undertaken before -- and one that completely took me by surprise in regards to how it would impact my faith.

With caring for these precious girls, in addition to my own children, my concept of motherhood has expanded with new appreciation for adoptive and foster parents. I have also seen the love of God with new lenses. As I consider my actions in light of being His adopted child, I now realize that His love for me is far greater than my ability to understand. Even so, I can be grateful, obedient, and receive His unconditional, unmerited love.


Before becoming a mother, I was a dorm mom. First to 40 teenage boys, and later to teenage girls. I was in my early twenties, newly married, and a complete foreigner to the world of parenting, and certainly to all things boy. I learned quickly, however, that children, no matter what age or gender, need to be love and approved, disciplined and held accountable, encouraged and challenged.

After having my own children, I realized it is sometimes easier to offer all that to other people's kids than it is to your own. When commissioned with in loco parentis, you do the job even if the kids don't like you for it, because you know you have their parents to answer to. Yet with our own children, it is easy to loose sight of the reality that we are also commissioned, by God, to raise up the children in our stead on His behalf.



This last photo is from two shots I took while chaperoning a teen retreat. The song of the weekend was "Tell the World" -- a reminder on many levels about what we ought to be telling our kids by our actions and words. While none of the students were my own children, for those 48 hours, they were my kids. They were the pulse of this generation and our future. As I invested into their lives, striving to speak truth in love, listen with compassion, and challenge them to live their lives with purpose, I realized that these young teens will be the ones setting the tone and influencing the lives of my own children. Investing in them is the Titus call for our culture.

Motherhood comes in so many forms. It isn't just about our DNA being reproduced. It is about learning to love as the Father loves. It is about choosing to sacrifice self, as Christ sacrificed for us. It is about looking at our children, whether we gave birth to them, adopted them, or cared for another's, and seeing the face of God reflected in their heart and soul. If motherhood becomes about us, we've missed the mark and the opportunity to become the hands and feet of God to those around us.

If you'd like to participate in the contest, head over here for more details.