This afternoon, in the middle of something as ordinary as a Target parking lot, I witnessed two very different moments that together painted a whole picture of motherhood.
The first was a young mom with three little ones. You could see the exhaustion on her face before she even opened the car doors. Her arms juggled grocery bags while she wrangled a toddler by one hand and tried to coax the baby into a car seat with the other. The older child whined for attention, and in the flurry of straps, bags, and buckles, her shoulders tensed. She moved quickly, head down, laser-focused on the task of getting everyone secured and out of the lot. There was no time to pause. Every second mattered. She was flustered, overwhelmed, and deep in survival mode—the kind that every parent of young kids knows all too well.
A few rows away, another car told a different story. This time, it was a grandmother with her three grandkids. She wasn’t rushing. She wasn’t flustered. She loaded them gently into the backseat, moving at her own pace, then reached into a bag and pulled out juice boxes. One by one, she passed them back, her face softening into a smile. The kids squealed with delight, and soon laughter bubbled out of the car. Instead of rushing off, she sat with them, savoring the sweetness of the moment. Time slowed down there in the back row of the lot, and joy filled the space where hurry usually lived.
Watching those two women side by side was like watching two chapters of the same story.
In the first, the mother is stretched thin, pulled in every direction, her love for her children expressed through the hard work of keeping them safe, fed, and moving through the day. It’s a love wrapped in exhaustion, but a love nonetheless.
In the second, the grandmother is free from the weight of schedules and the pressing demands of young motherhood. She remembers how fast it all went. She remembers the chaos and the blur. Now she has the gift of perspective. She knows that juice boxes and giggles in a parking lot can be just as precious as milestones. She leans into it, choosing presence over productivity.
And as I watched, I realized: they are the same woman.
The mom in survival mode, who feels like she can barely breathe, will one day be the grandma who takes her time. One day, the rushing will stop. One day, the survival mode will ease. And when it does, she’ll look back and realize how quickly it all passed.
Because that’s the truth of parenting, isn’t it? When we’re in it, it feels endless. The crying, the tantrums, the car seats, the grocery trips—it all feels like a never-ending cycle of exhaustion. But then one day, you blink, and they’re taller than you. They’re driving themselves to Target, and you’re the one slowing down, waiting for them to come visit with their own little ones in tow.
Standing in that parking lot today, I felt both the ache and the gift of that perspective. As a mom with young kids myself, I recognized the frantic pace of the first woman. I saw myself in her. The bags slipping, the sweat forming at the temples, the constant whisper in your head that says, “Hurry. Get it done. Keep moving.” It’s survival. And survival is necessary.
But I also felt the pull of the second scene. The reminder that these days are fleeting, that one day I will miss even the hard parts. That laughter in the backseat is worth slowing down for. That juice boxes can be just as sacred as graduations.
Maybe we can’t always live like the grandma when we’re still the mom. Life doesn’t let us. Kids need to get buckled, groceries need to be put away, and schedules don’t wait. But maybe, every once in a while, we can pause. Maybe we can grab the juice boxes ourselves, sit in the car, and laugh before we start the engine. Maybe we can live a little in those small, ordinary moments instead of rushing past them.
Because one day, we’ll look back and realize that what felt ordinary was extraordinary all along.
