If you haven’t yet seen this video brought to you by P&G and other sponsors of this summer’s Olympic Games, grab a tissue, enjoy, and then think with me.

I spent a lot of hours getting my daughters back and forth to lessons and rehearsals of various kinds and watching those lessons, rehearsals, and the performances they led to. I don’t regret one minute.

I’m glad I could help my girls develop their talents and skills. I actually wish I’d done a better job of it. But as important as that is, I’ve decided over the years that a mother’s most important job is connecting with her children’s hearts and helping her children connect their hearts to God’s.

It’s not easy. We make mistakes. Our own issues get in the way, or we don’t understand the goal until our children are grown, with lives of their own.

Just like we sometimes have to extend grace to our own mothers and like we hope for our children to extend grace to us, sometimes we have to extend grace to ourselves as well.

But I don’t think it’s ever too late to communicate love and a desire for relationship, to apologize, to live out faith and point the way.

So whatever else we do this Mother’s Day, whatever our situations and the ages of our children, whether we feel pampered and praised when the day is done or not, I hope we’ll take a few minutes to think about the mothers we’ve been, the mothers we are, and the mothers we want to be.

Because being mom really is the hardest job in the world, just like the video says.

It’s also the best.

DIANE