Maybe you’ve spent years and thousands of dollars to have that little one your holding, maybe you just wanted to be a mom and it happened, maybe you weren’t planning on being a mom, but it happened anyways. No matter, I want to tell you something…it’s OK to get tired of it sometimes. To get tired of the demands, the discipline, the whining, the not being able to just do “whatever” for dinner. It’s OK.

Just because we CHOSE, or were chosen for, this life of mommyhood doesn’t mean that we have to love, or even like, every minute of it. Just because we may have been through hell and back in the getting and having of these little people doesn’t mean that we’re NOT beyond grateful for them in spite of the tough times. Or that we’re not allowed to struggle with all of it.

I remember going through infertility and thinking “I will never complain about anything, because I will just be beyond ecstatic to FINALLY have a child”.

Sometimes I still feel guilty complaining, then chuckle to myself about it, because, honestly, no one knows just how motherhood will be. Nothing and no one can prepare you for what’s ahead.

No other mom, even your mom, can tell you what it will be like, because no one is doing what you’ve done before. No one has mixed your personality with those of your little ones. This is more than once in a lifetime.

Just because someone else makes it look like a cake-walk with their own kids, doesn’t mean that your life should too. Or that their life even looks like that all the time. There are moms with more {and less} kids than us that I look at and think, “Boy, I couldn’t do that”, and I know others look at us and think the same thing.

I love my kids, but I don’t always love the stuff that came along with them. Our children, while a package deal {every child comes with poopie diapers, sleepless nights, and tantrums etc}, doesn’t mean we have to love the THINGS. Because, honestly, all those other things are just that, things.  And it’s OK to not love things. It’s more important that we love them, our children; the little people they are, the big people they are becoming.

You’re not less of a mom because you don’t appreciate every iota of baggage these little ones come with, because if we were all honesty with each other, none of us do. Yes, some of us handle different things better than others {honestly vomit, poopie diapers and poop-splosions don’t bother me in the least, but pull my hair or whine without ceasing and WATCH OUT!}, but that doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate the little people we’ve been blessed with.

We’re not meant to do this mommy thing alone.

In what other “job” do you receive zero training, zero support, zero breaks, zero pay, and be expected to love every single stinkin’ second of it, with a maniacal smile on your face? It doesn’t exist. It’s OK Mamas, to be weary; to be tired of the endless pointlessness of picking up toys and clothes, dirty dishes and dirty diapers: It is OKAY! But this job is still so, SO worth it.  And your value of it isn’t determined by the tough minutes, but by the sweet moments. In the choosing of doing, day after day.

We’re not meant to do this alone, to keep our frustrations all bottled up inside. We’re meant to do this with God, in community with Him, our spouses, and other moms and dads. Even Jesus wasn’t too keen at times on the job He was called to do! But he sought God when he needed Him most. Mamas, it’s OK to be overwhelmed and frustrated, as long as we remember to draw near to the One from which we will always get our strength, the one who loved us first.

This post was first published on June 5, 2013 on my original blog.