I think about the moment I held my daughter for the first time often.

I look at her now, how quickly she’s growing, how much she’s changed and it feels like only yesterday I held her as a baby for the very first time.

That was the moment I became a mother.

Or was it?

Did a switch flip overnight? One day not a mother, the next day suddenly one?

In some ways, yes. But in a lot of ways, no.

Because years later, I still feel like I’m finding my feet. Still learning. Still failing. Still trying again the next day. Motherhood hasn’t been a moment I arrived at once and for all, it’s been a continual becoming.

And I’m not a perfect mother.

I’m growing. I’m becoming gentler, wiser, more patient than I used to be. But perfection still feels a long way off.

The funny thing is, my kids don’t seem to notice the things I criticise in myself.

They don’t keep score the way I do.

They see my heart before they see my performance. They remember the way I hold them, comfort them, laugh with them, sit beside them. They experience love before they analyse my output.

And maybe that’s what some of us need to hear this Mother’s Day: Your heart matters more than your output.

The world measures motherhood in an unspoken way as productivity, patience, spotless homes, perfectly packed lunchboxes and whether we managed to hold it all together.

But God has always looked deeper than that: “People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” 1 Samuel 16:7

Dallas Willard says it perfectly, “The main thing God gets out of your life is not the achievements you accomplish. It’s the person you become”

Maybe being a good mother isn’t about getting everything right.

Maybe it’s about loving deeply, apologising when we need to, showing up again tomorrow, and letting His grace meet us in all the places we feel unfinished.