The following Mother's Day essay is written by Jen Pollok Michel, a writer, speaker, wife, and mother— who writes about faith and its habits. She writes a weekly Substack called A Habit Called Faith.

I found out I was pregnant for the first time in the summer of 2000. I was a high school teacher on Chicago’s North Shore, and that fall, I returned to school and learned to avoid the smell of stale coffee in the teacher’s lounge. It would be a few more months before I told my colleagues and my students that I was expecting in March and would take maternity leave for the remainder of the year. I never went back, which is to say: motherhood upended my life entirely.

It’s been 24 years since I became a mother, and as I’ve written about publicly in other spaces, I didn’t exactly count on having five children. (Twins at the end: surprise!) Yet motherhood is one of the greatest life gifts God has given to me. I say this honestly, though it’s hard to say so candidly, knowing as I do that many women would love the gift of children and yet have never been able to enlarge their family. I want to be sensitive to that palpable grief, which, as I’ve learned from friends, doesn’t heal entirely simply because you grow older

You have every permission to stop reading this letter here.

As we approach Mother’s Day, here I am, wanting to say aloud that I’m so grateful to be a mother. I have not had a single regret for any of the sacrifices that motherhood has demanded of me, at least not from the vantage point of now. In fact, I’m so glad I became a mother in my late twenties and had the opportunity to have as many children as I have had. Neither Ryan nor I wrung our hands about the perfect time to start our family (as if it was even our choice), and we feel grateful for the family God has given to us. Our children are finding their way in the world, most of them clinging to a living faith in Jesus. I’m not sure that I can really ask for more, though I recognize that every day of motherhood is a day of contingency and uncertainty. I have no control over the future, and this realization reminds me that trust is central to the life project of faith.

I’m not usually one to claim any kind of maternal expertise, though I suppose I’ve learned a few things along the way. They seemed relevant to share here, for anyone interested in listening in. Here are some things I’d wish I’d known as a new mother:

1. You’re going to need so many wardrobes—and change is your only constant.

Before I became a mother, I imagined that pregnancy meant maternity clothes. Little did I know there was the stage before maternity clothes, when your pants don’t quite fit. You size up. And when those pants are no longer zipping up as they should, you use a rubber band or hair elastic to extend their life, wrapping it around the top button of your jeans and praying it holds.

Finally, you’re wearing your maternity clothes. Phew. You made it. Then the baby is born. Now your wardrobe must accommodate different demands. You need easy access to your breasts, so this calls for new bras and new shirts. Your pants still aren’t fitting: not your maternity pants and not your pre-pregnancy pants. With some luck, your in-between size does the trick for now. Actually, you can count on this being your new size . . . until you’re pregnant again.

This brief meditation of wardrobes is, of course, a reflection on the theme of motherhood: change is the only constant. If you’ve survived the first year with a newborn, you know that every breakthrough in the search for a daily rhythm is soon. Your baby does something consistently . . . for a period of three days. It’s constant learning and constant change.

Today, I wake up to hot coffee, but I have new mothering tasks now that three children are out of the house (and two are soon to fly the nest). For one, I’m central command for airport bookings, which means that I not only buy tickets for visiting children, most of whom can’t really afford them for themselves. I am also required, on most occasions, to send confirmation emails, reminding passengers of departure times, luggage limits, and confirmation codes.

As our older children move into the world, their lives change near-constantly, and our lives constantly adapt. They move. They find significant others. They marry. They move again. I am mother and mother-in-law, mom and Jen. No one is small, and not everyone needs constant hugs. I can’t help grieving some of these changes, even as I remember how necessary it is that everyone keeps growing.

So, I dust off the phrase from those earliest years, and I let yourself lean into some more generosity, toward myself and my children.

It’s okay—because we’re all just learning.

2. At every stage, you’ll have to grow with them.

Before I became a mother, I imagined I’d read the relevant books and download all the necessary information for being the world’s best mother. I will say that some of the sleep books helped immensely, especially when the little swaddled demon would not shut her eyes. Who knew that there was actually a physiological reason for putting your baby down at 9 am and 1 pm, then no later than 7 pm? God bless The Baby Whisperer and Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, which helped me to figure out that my baby was overtired, not simply a monster.

But the rest of it? Mothers, we grow up with them. Motherhood is on-the-job training, so consider now the money you’ll need to set aside for therapy for the firstborn, with whom you’ve made your most egregious mistakes. Pray for a special dispensation of grace with this eldest.)

Then start being generous with yourself for the things you don’t yet know because you’re not yet grown. Learn to repeat my little mantra together, for you and your child. It’s okay—because we’re both just learning. You’ll need it when they start kindergarten. You need it for the occasion when they lie for the very first time (and worse). You’ll need it when they leave for college and forget to text you. Keep growing with them, which is to say: don’t outgrow your need for humility and wisdom beyond yourself.

3. There will be time—but it’s maybe not now.

I have a life now that I could never have imagined 20 years ago. I sleep uninterrupted, I wake on my own, I drink my first cup of coffee hot and in complete silence. Twenty years of intense motherhood came and went, and I can remember the era when there used to be hardly enough time to take a shower and call a friend. But now I have enough time to play the piano and iron a shirt and spend the first hour a day with Jesus, the house shushed and still.

I am 50, and there is time now. Hold on, dear one. It’ll be here before you know it.

4. Jesus knows the way of the mother.

A friend—and young mother—in my life is reading through the Gospels, and she’s been struck by how often Jesus is interrupted—and clung to, as if swarmed by his own noisy brood of children. I’m stealing this insight from her, though when I think of it now, from my perspective of years, I think less about Jesus and his interruptions and more about Jesus and his grief and his constant, prayerful hope. I think of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem and praying for Peter’s faith to not fail.

Parenting is an anguishing task. These are people we’re talking about, and we are forced to let them go into a big, bad world. And because they’re people, they’re set with all the features of human beings: capacity for foolishness, for selfishness, for breaking your mother heart. Jesus knows the way of the mother, and he hears every cry of the mother’s heart. One need think only of Saint Monica, mother of Augustine, who lamented her son’s prodigal story for many years. Those tears, Bishop Ambrose, told her, would never be neglected by God.

Wherever you might be in your journey of motherhood, I pray for you, dear reader, that you will be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer (Rom. 12:12). And yes, I wish for you words of affirmation of the good work you’re engaged in, as you celebrate with your family this coming Sunday.