Couldn’t sleep last night so I wrote some words for my girls.

Sometimes late at night when the house is quiet and the hallway finally rests from the sound of our day, I think about the little girl I used to be.

I had many questions and rarely answers that made sense. I learned too early how heavy the world could feel for shoulders that small.

There are parts of my childhood
that still sit inside my heart like unopened letters and grief folded neatly between the pages of time.

For many years I asked God the same question, why?

Why did that little girl have to learn courage in places where she should have only known safety? Why did love sometimes feel like something you had to chase instead of something that held you?

But then life brought me to a small hallway in the middle of the night.

Suddenly there were tiny footsteps. Sometimes I can still hear those soft little steps across the floor, tiger feet and mermaid pajamas, slipping quietly down the hall.

“Mommy…hold it”. A whisper in the dark. A little hand reaching up just for one more snuggle.

Somewhere in those moments the questions I had asked God for years, began to change.

I was no longer just the girl who once needed safety. I am the mother who got to build it.

I watched you learn to read one careful word at a time, your fingers tracing letters like they were secret doors opening.

I watched you chase butterflies in the yard, dance through living rooms and the rain, and ask questions about the stars like the whole sky was a puzzle that belonged to you.

I hope to teach you about faith, not as something to borrow from me, but something I prayed you would continue to discover for yourselves.

Along the way, I have often worried I wasn’t doing it right. I measured myself against other mothers who seemed calmer, wiser, like they carried motherhood as naturally as breathing. My own fears fogged the moments with you girls.

The fear of fighting while fighting fear. The fear of not fighting enough for things that matter. The fear that somehow I might repeat the broken pieces I once came from.

Oh how I wish I could be kinder to myself. Because if motherhood is measured in perfection, no mother could ever win.

If it is measured in love, in bedtime prayers, and messy kitchens and whispered “I love yous” after a hard day then I know this much is true…I loved and still do.

I love you fiercely. I love you with the kind of love that comes from someone who understands just how precious love is.

I remember what it felt like to long for it. If nothing in this life is wasted, then maybe even the grief of that little girl I was shaping something sacred.

Maybe it was preparing a heart that would hold you gently when you were afraid. Maybe it was teaching me how to recognize a miracle when it came tiptoeing down the hallway in tiger feet, with sleepy eyes, and mermaid pajamas.

I had often wonder why God allowed the beginning of my story to look the way it did. But when I look at my family, my girls, I no longer ask why.

Instead I find myself whispering something else, thank you. Thank you for trusting me with these daughters. Thank you for letting a girl who once searched for belonging grow into a mother who could create it.

If one day you find yourselves awake in the middle of the night listening to little footsteps coming down your own hallway, I hope you remember this…

I know I wasn’t a perfect mom.

Sometimes I was afraid.
Sometimes I was unsure.
Sometimes I was sleepy.
Sometimes I wished I could go back and hold the moments longer. But I have always and forever loved you with every ounce of the heart I have.

If heaven ever asked me
whether I would live this life again?

every joy,
every scar,
every lesson,
just to be your mom,
I would say yes every single time.

Because out of all the stories written about my life, I have found the greatest joy in the one where I get to be your mom.

I love you.