Mother’s Day is a day shaped for sweet celebration—but it also exposes: who we’ve lost, who we long for, who we have never known. If you've ever spent a Mother’s Day service weeping or avoided it altogether, you know what I mean. (Precious brother or sister, if that's you, I hope this and this can serve you. May God bless you and keep you.)

And yet, even for the woman who is not currently experiencing any acute loss or longing, it can be an unexpectedly difficult day. This article is for that woman—the one whose circumstances seem ideal on paper. The one whose house and hands are full, who is hungry to be acknowledged and appreciated.

To this woman, I want to offer two pieces of counsel:

Look out.
Get dressed.

Dear God,

We see your fingerprints all over the precious mothers around us! They have loved us by sacrificing their bodies—you loved us the same way on the cross. They have loved us by preparing homes and meals for us—and you do the same for us in heaven. They have loved us by caring deeply for seemingly insignificant details in our lives—and you do the same for us every moment. They are doing the things that you placed in their DNA to show the world what YOU are like. We praise you for mothers, God, because you came up with them in the first place, because they bear your image so faithfully by the way they love, because you didn’t have to give the world the good gift of mothers—but you did. We praise you for they are fearfully and wonderfully made!

We’re celebrating mothers today not because we deny the pain and loss that many in the room are enduring—but we celebrate because pain and loss do not win and do not have the final say.