The Power of Mom

The Power of Mom

Happy Mother’s Day Everyone! To you and yours! Before we face a long, hopefully fun-filled summer with kids out of school and vacation days looming, I wanted to take a moment to remind us all of the power of mom. To not only thank her -- but to acknowledge all she does not only for the family, but for the community and the world. How she embodies both the strength and gentleness to form the future generations. How moms everywhere are creating the future of the world one child at a time.

It was my son Ben’s first day of life at our home and I held him in in my arms. He was tiny, pink, and delicate, wrapped in a blanket and still weighing almost nothing. Yet suddenly he was everything to me. As I gazed in awe at his sleeping face I said to my mother, “Isn’t he amazing? Aren’t all babies amazing?”

She touched my shoulder, looked at me with a smile in her eyes and said, “We all still are.”

Wow.

In that moment, I saw how truly amazing my mother was and still is. I felt how much she loves not only me, but all people. I understood it was the same love I have for my son, and that this love is universal. We mothers love like that. Nothing will ever take away our amazement of our children. Babies and children are amazing . . . and when we grow up, we still are.

For a moment, however, I doubted my mother. I thought for sure, my newborn baby is much more amazing than I am. And that I am not as amazing now as I was when I was just a few days old, as if the amazing-ness sloughs off as we age. But as I allowed her love for me to soak in, and tears welled up in my eyes, I got that in her eyes, I am as amazing today as the day I was born. Just like my son does for me, I fill her with love and wonder. All she wants is for me to be happy and to be all that I can be in life.

I suddenly saw that I had a choice regarding how I saw myself. I could see myself through my own eyes as not amazing—or through her eyes, as unstoppably amazing. What if I saw myself from my mother’s perspective? How much more fun would my life be? What if I saw other people—even the difficult ones—as amazing? What if all the people in the world saw themselves and others as amazing? We could accomplish so much more together!

What if a mother’s love could transform the world?

I think it can. In fact, I know it can. I know deep in the marrow of my bones that the love of a mother can not only shift how our children see themselves, it can shift how they see the world—and their role in the world. Therefore, their actions in the world can come from that amazing-ness that we see them as having, and that amazing-ness will be expressed in the world. So, for a child, a mother’s role is to not only to love and protect her children, it is also to be the one to see them as amazing, even when they don’t see themselves that way. I wish for everyone to experience my mother’s wisdom and understand how you, too, are truly amazing. It is a choice. Try it on. See yourself as amazing. See everyone you come in contact with or make a request of as amazing. If you do, you will suddenly see yourself as UNSTOPPABLE, and together we can transform the world.