Recent texts on my phone:

“Mom, could you pick up me up at the front door of school?”

“Could you please bring me my pants and could I also borrow your slip?” (This from one of my daughters who goes to school nearby.)

“What time is dinner tomorrow?”

“Are you making brownies for the Super Bowl?”

“Do you have any ant traps?” (Seriously!)

Or maybe your requests don’t come via text. Maybe your requests are of the “younger” variety, verbally executed, but just as needy.

“Mommy, could you please tie my shoes?”

“Where are my shin guards?”

“Could I have a friend over to play today?”

“Mommy, will you read to me?”

These requests never mean any harm at all, but they can wear us down, can’t they?

I love my girls, and I love the privilege of being their mom, but some days, love feels like sacrifice.

Or, put another way, some days love feels like laundry—so constant, never caught up, and you just have to keep doing it over and over and over again.

On other days, love feels like driving-back and forth to school or to practices or to any other activity that our kids can’t drive themselves to.

And some days, love just feels worn out and tired, like I just won’t make it to the end of the day.

It’s all sacrifice. And it’s all love.

But isn’t that the model we’ve been shown by Jesus? My pastor recently said that Jesus’s coming to earth was His humiliation. Think about that. Just leaving His rightful place, His Heavenly home, took deep sacrifice on His part.

Because He loved us so much.

And His time here on earth? Not so cushy. He was tormented, not just by average people, but also by the Pharisees—people who should have been his friends. And at one of his lowest points, Jesus was also tormented by Satan himself.

But He took it because He loved us so much.

He endured physical abuse, verbal abuse, and, worst of all, separation from His Heavenly father.

Because He loved us so much.

Sweet Mama, does love feel especially much like a sacrifice these days? Are you counting up all the ways you’ve loved your kids and feeling the deep sting of pain or longing or exhaustion?

Remember this: as you love your children, you are showing them Jesus. In the exhaustion, in the everyday-ness of it all, as you lay down your life for your kids, you are showing them Jesus.

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” John 15:12-14

That’s what love feels like to me.