If you’re a mom, I’m going to guess that you’ve had a day or two that went something like this…

You wake up in the middle of the night because your toddler is screaming that he’s “hungeee” and is demanding chocolate. You say “no” and insist he goes back to bed, but in a toddler’s mind, when you say “no” to chocolate, it sends him into a raging tantrum, followed by a refusal of sleep of any sort.

OR

Your alarm goes off at 6:00 AM, you put your workout shoes on, head to the living room to begin your 30 minutes of exercise (also known as therapy) when you are graciously confronted with the smell of pee. You search, but can’t seem to find where it’s coming from. Until you notice there’s a saturated pull-up stuck between your coach cushions.

OR

You decide that you need to run to the store and grab milk for the baby. You load all your kiddos up in the minivan, pray that your middle child doesn’t demolish a glass jar of pickles in the middle of the condiment aisle like he did last week, and head to Kroger (or Publix if you are lucky and live in a nice area). You park, pack all the kids into the shopping cart, hustle through the produce aisle, attempt to avoid the cookie aisle, grab your milk and about 9 million other things you forgot you were out of… get to the checkout line and thank Jesus that you made it through without seriously losing your crap on a kid. You dig into your purse to pay…. when you realize, uh oh, your wallet is in your diaper bag which you left at HOME.

OR

You slave over dinner for at least an hour. Baked chicken, veggies and mashed potatoes. You even cut up fruit so you could claim you to yourself that you hit most of the main food groups. You go to serve your family and every single last one of your children refuse to eat it. One says he doesn’t like chicken, even though it’s his favorite thing to eat normally. One claims he isn’t hungry at all. And one throws his plate on the floor in protest.

Motherhood is hard.

It’s wonderful.

It’s exhausting.

It’s energetic.

Some days I feel like I am the luckiest person in the world to be raising these boys and other days? I feel like I want to list them on e-bay.

I often joke that motherhood makes me bipolar. But, really. I’m not joking.

I never knew you could feel so much love and frustration all within the same 7 minutes. But that IS motherhood.

As you know, I write a lot about my journey as a mom…the good and the “I’m never gonna survive this tantrum” moments. I share it all.

One thing that keeps me going, lifts me up and encourages me to be a better mom is community. Other women who are right where I am at, whether it’s having a snuggle session on the couch or surviving a screaming toddler in a restaurant.

I turn to other moms because I know they “get it”.

What I realized over time was that WE, as women and mothers, all desire a community of encouragement. We all desire to be loved and understood and supported. We desire friendship and grace. We desire to be celebrated.

We want to know that we aren’t alone in this motherhood journey.

We are doing incredible work in those big and small moments and He wants us to remember that.

I hope you see, hear or feel something here on this blog that you can relate to. Because I’m right here with you, in the trenches of what some days feels like a blessing and other days feels like a burden.

We got this mamas… Let’s celebrate!