I was just a teenager when it first hit me: There was something very different about my mom.
It all started the summer before I entered high school. I was 13 years old and feeling pretty crummy. Headaches. Fatigue. Vision problems. Doctors said I was fine, just a normal teenager. But my mom? She wasn’t convinced. Something was wrong, she could just tell. So she pushed the doctors to order an MRI, even when they said she was being “one of those crazy mothers.” Eventually they gave in–and discovered a benign tumor sitting in my brain. Caught just in time, too. All thanks to my mom’s weird hunch.
I underwent surgery a week after my fourteenth birthday. The operation was successful, but I had a tough road ahead. For an entire year, I woke up almost every morning throwing up. Terrible headaches. Couldn’t sleep from all the medications I’d been given. I missed most of my freshman year of high school and had to be tutored at home.
But my mom somehow made everything better. In the hospital, she slept by my bed every night in the most uncomfortable chair known to mankind. Once I got home, she didn’t leave my side for a second. She woke up with me at 3 o’clock in the morning. Researched nausea-fighting remedies. Helped me with homework so I wouldn’t fall behind. She even found a way to sneak into the room during my regular MRIs so I wouldn’t be alone.
That year, we spent every day together. And that’s when I noticed my mom just wasn’t like other people. I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly, but she was almost otherworldly. For one thing, on my worst days, all she had to do was hold my hand and I’d feel 10 times better. She was better than any doctor-prescribed medication. Not only that, but she had this odd “mom sense.” She could tell if something was bothering me or if I needed to talk even before I knew it. And she was fearless. My mom’s only 4′ 10″, but she’d grow before my eyes into a much taller woman when it came to protecting me from doctors with bad bedside manners.
But the strangest thing of all? While everyone else around her was falling apart, she never broke down. Not once. At least not in front of me. Like a real-life Wonder Woman.
She’s still like that today. Whenever I call her on the phone, I’m constantly amazed. She does about 500 things at once. Doles out advice, cooks up a storm, folds laundry and manages to sort out my life all in one 15-minute conversation. I can’t help but think now, as I did back then: How in the world does she do it?
When I ask her about it, though, she just shrugs like it’s no big deal. She doesn’t think of herself as a superhero. No, the reason behind her strength is simple. “That’s what happens,” she says, “when you become a mother.”
I’m not a mom, so I’ll have to take her word for it. But I suspect God reserves a special kind of power just for mothers. One that transforms even a petite lady like my mom into a force to be reckoned with. It’s nothing special to her, but it’s meant everything to me.
I’m so thankful for her love that surpasses all understanding. This living, breathing miracle in my life.
What do you think? Is there something miraculous about motherhood? Share your story below!
