Before starting this reflection, I would be remiss not to recognize today’s beautiful feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. May La Virgen Morena watch over us and keep us safe.

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Willing to Make Sacrifices for Others: The Reality of Motherhood

Motherhood in its physical sense is a powerful force of nature. When a woman discovers she is carrying life within her, she is filled with two competing emotions: joy and fear. She is joyful, in awe of the creation that is growing within her. And she is fearful, because she knows that the fulfillment of this growth is a painful birth.

Fortunately for the human race, the fear of childbirth is one of the first sacrifices a mother makes for her child. She sacrifices that fear in order to give her child life. Motherhood is full of such sacrifices, though not all of them on such a grand scale.

A mother sacrifices the music she would like to listen to in favor of her child’s request. She going to lunch with a friend to stay home with a sick teenager. She flies across the country to help her daughter deal with the realities of deployment, sacrificing time and events with her spouse and other children. She denies wanting the last piece of pie.

The sacrificial spirit of motherhood is a spirit of giving. Each sacrifice that a mother makes becomes a gift for the person she loves. Gifts of time, of attention, of life, even of pie.

Who do I make sacrifices for? What is one thing I can sacrifice so that someone else will benefit?