Being a mother is not for the faint of heart.

And I’m not talking about the stinky diapers that have to be changed or the mud tracked in on the clean floors or even the artwork masterfully drawn on the walls with colored markers. I don’t even mean the constant clothes washing and folding, the carpool lines for days or the thousands of meals cooked.

What I am talking about are the moments when your child is hurt by a peer, or their dreams are dashed because they didn’t make the team.

Or those moments when consequences catch up to their actions and you have no power to right their wrong.

Those are the moments that give reason to pause at the notion of becoming a mother.

The thing is, you don’t realize this until you become a mother.

Growing up, my mother was there cooking and cleaning for me and she was also there as a shoulder to cry on. But back then, I had no clue my hurts and pains were also her hurts and pains. That is until I became a mother.

When my first child was born, I will never forget the moment I saw her sweet little face and tiny toes and fingers. I knew right then if anyone ever tried to touch a hair on her head, I could kill.

It was insane to think I could possess those feelings when they had never entered my mind, but it was like something just clicked and my whole world changed.

And for the longest, I thought I could never love anyone so much. That was until my second, third and fourth children came along.

Those magical mother powers just work like that, but lest you forget, more children mean more trials and feelings of wanting to fix and figure for them. And it never goes away. Even as adults, mothers, or at least this mother, still want to protect and fix every little hurt or disappointment that comes my children’s way, but life doesn’t work like that. In fact, it is a bit of heartbreak when you realize they don’t even want you to.

The late comedian Gilda Radner once said, “[Motherhood is] the biggest gamble in the world. It is the glorious life force. It’s huge and scary — it’s an act of infinite optimism.”

So like I said earlier, being a mother is not for the faint of heart, but through all the disagreements and fusses, hurts and pains and worry and tears, it is the most wonderful gift God has given me.