My fellow mothers, I have a little message to share with you. I know that your life is crazy—days are full and nights can be worse (especially if you have a baby and toddler like ours!). Yet God still wants to be a part of your crazy, messy, beautiful chaos. Your spiritual life is going to look different than it did when you were single or even when you were married without children.

Here’s the great news: there is no perfect way to pray! There is no special formula you have to follow. Get to Mass, receive the sacraments, and then just be open to the presence of God in every moment. Okay, so you might not be able to spend an hour in adoration like that other mom, and that’s okay. One day, you may be able to again, but this is just not the season for you for that. Maybe you can, and that’s wonderful!

But what God wants is not the perfect little box of that one hour—he wants it ALL. He wants to be with you when the baby’s diaper explodes in the grocery store, and the toddler has somehow opened the Cheerios box, and only now do you realize he has tossed a literal bread crumb line of Cheerios throughout the store aisles. He wants to be with you when the teenager slams his bedroom door in your face and you want to burst into tears, but you know you need to stay calm and loving. He wants to be with you when you forget you still are wearing a hand towel around your waist when you’re putting your dress on for Mass, because the toddler princess started screaming and you had to comfort her, calm her, get her dressed, and run out the door—only to realize it in the middle of Mass, when the towelette starts slipping down from under your dress, and you have to somehow manage to pull it off and shove it in the baby bag without anyone noticing. Yeah, that happened. And guess what, God wants to be there in all those moments.

St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta wrote about her “I Thirst” theme to her sisters once. She said that what each sister needed to understand was that Jesus was first saying “I Thirst” to each of them. Only when they could accept that Jesus desired all of them were they able to help quench his thirst in loving and caring for the poor. I’ve been contemplating this, and it came to me like a burst—just how much God loves us. It’s almost cliché now isn’t it? God loves you! But consider this . . . more than your husband longs for you, God is longing for you. He is passionately in love with you! We only need to stop resisting and pushing away his love because we feel unworthy. We need to let down our guard and be humble enough to realize that we’re not perfect, but that we are perfectly loved by our Heavenly Bridegroom.

In adoration the other night, these words came to me, and I felt like they were meant for each of you:

I thirst for YOU.

I see you, my daughter.

I see you.

I see your hands caring, your heart breaking,

your eyes crying.

I see you.

I know your struggles, your longings, your worries,

your loves.

I know everything about you, and I love you, I.

Love. You.

I thirst for you.

You think you’re not good enough, not mom-enough,

not wife-enough,

not fit enough, not healthy enough, not you-enough,

not enough.

You – are – so – wrong.

You are wonderful!

I love you, my daughter.

I love you.

I love your messy hair and tired eyes. I love your body stretched

and given away.

I love you.

I love the way you

worry about the

smallest cares for your children, so they feel love and how

your lip quivers

when they leave.

         Even though they can drive you crazy, you love them.

When will you let

me love you?

When will you let go of these standards you gave

yourself and receive

Me – all of my love.

I thirst for you.

more than your

husband longs to be close to you, I long to

have your heart in mine.

I love—all of you.

Will you let me in?