It’s no secret to most parents that having children leads to multiple lessons in humility: “Hey mom, is that a boy or a girl (pointing to the woman with short hair)?”  To the neighbor next door, ” Your dog pooped in our yard (sorry Heather).” Or my all time favorite…”Wow, mom it really smells! Who tooted?!”

Yesterday, however, might have been my crowning moment.  

Justin was flying as he usually does on weekends and I had the kids solo for church. No big deal, I had already done this numerous times by myself.  I got the kids all dressed in their Sunday best and even showered myself <cue in heavenly chorus> AND was out the door on time. 

Way to go me!  Supermom strikes again! <yes, my ego was bursting a bit>

But then as we turned into the church parking lot I heard Mary’s voice exclaim, “mom, I’m not wearing any shoes!” …..and just like that, my ego bubble burst into a million pieces. “Wait, what?! Why aren’t you wearing any shoes?! What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

And then the frustration and anger set in, but it wasn’t because she forgot to put on her shoes…it was how it was going to make ME look. Incompetent. Incapable of managing such a large number of children by myself. And to make matters worse we were headed into a church where people were always dressed very well and always seemed so put together. Great. So now I’d really stand out.

As we breached the doorway and entered the cry room (because there was no way I was taking a shoeless child into the main church for all the congregation to see) I tensed up, waiting for finger pointing, eye rolling or even <gulp> snickering, but that’s not what I saw.

I saw a mother (also solo) juggling a set of twins; feeding one with one hand as she mixed a bottle with her other hand. Her older daughter colored on the floor with another woman’s child who was dressed in a princess costume (crown and all).  I saw another mother snuggling her special needs daughter who was extra wiggly and full of joyful energy. In front of me was a set of parents to a little boy no more than two who was fussy and the mother looked visibly worn.  Then it dawned on me. No one cared if my daughter had shoes on, they were all conquering their own parental battles….some way more challenging than a shoeless child. All of the sudden I felt silly even worrying about it in the first place.  I was doing the best I can with what I had and so was every parent in that room.  In fact, in some way we were leaning on each other; flashing grins of encouragement or eyes of understanding to one another knowing all along that we were not alone and if one was going down, we were going down together.

And, hey, if all else fails I have a great story to tell at parties later on.