Most of the jewelry I wear has a lot of emotional meaning behind it. But never has a piece of jewelry evoked such an outwardly emotional response from me until I saw the James Avery Mother’s Love collection. Now it could’ve been because I was having a hard parenting day (or week…or month…) but the design literally brought tears to my eyes.
If you’ve never been to a James Avery store, I’d highly recommend going. The people who work there are genuinely kind, helpful, and never got frustrated with me for wanting to try on half of the jewelry in the store. What stood out to me the most is the simplistic beauty in every design. James Avery himself said that “I strive to keep designs from being contrived, cluttered, or cute. The challenge is to keep things simple.” This man speaks my language. His jewelry is timeless.
When I was thinking about which piece of jewelry I was going to pick out and how I wanted to relate it back to Valentine’s Day, I knew it wasn’t going to be something that just gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. Since having my daughter a year and a half ago, I’ve begun to learn a different, much harder form of love. A sacrificial, dying to self over and over and over again kind of love. And that has been a hard journey for me.
Why I Chose the Mothers Love Ring
I didn’t know that I could simultaneously love someone unconditionally and struggle to like them at the same moment. I struggle to put into words how hard being a mom is some days. Yes, there is joy and happiness, but there are also hard hard hard moments. And no matter how many times someone tells me that “the years are short” it doesn’t change the fact that being a mom is hard.
I’m the type of person who likes to run away from hard things. Hard conversations, hard jobs, hard people, I typically try to ignore or walk away from anything that appears even remotely difficult. But being a mom teaches me over and over again that I can’t run away from being a mom. I can’t just leave the house when my daughter is whining constantly, or ignore her when she disobeys me.
What can be even harder, is that I can’t run away from myself when I’ve failed my daughter. See, being a mom is more than facing my child’s sin, it’s about facing my own sin. No matter how many breaks I get or full nights of rest I receive, my impatience and anger will still be there waiting for me when I come back or wake up.
So often we want to run away from pain and from anything that makes us uncomfortable. Unfortunately when we run away from hard things we miss the chance to grow and learn in the process. Being a mom forces me to remember that the most valuable things in this life are often hard. More than anything, motherhood to me is a process of coming to Jesus and asking him to forgive my failings as a mother and pleading for more patience with my daughter.
The James Avery ring reminds me of this process. Being a mother isn’t about the perfectly curated Instagram feed of smiling children and impeccably decorated houses. It’s the daily, moment by moment, commitment to love my daughter through the tears and hard days, the sweet moments and the failing moments.
I want to dedicate this Valentine’s Day to my daughter. Yes, my daughter is hard to love sometimes, but she has also shown me the unlovable parts of myself. And while that is often difficult to come to terms with, she has forced me to face the worst of myself and grow in patience, graciousness, and love.
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