When I think of the mother I want to be, I think of many women in my life who have inspired me—and continue to.

Every step, every milestone, no matter how small, is such a joy because I know what it took for my son to get there. Every smile and every hug are a gift, and I’m keenly aware of this since it did not come naturally at first.

Mother’s Day is bound to be memorable, but not because of the global pandemic we’re all enduring. Rather, because of the immense gift that I have been given in our beautiful, healthy daughter.

As my 10-year-old son and I were chatting about Mother’s Day, we created this song.

If we know the voice of the Lord Jesus well, and we continue to respond to it, then we know what follows it: an abiding peace and confident hope that cannot be taken away.

Let me urge you again: make this time of plague and quarantine the occasion to dig the “Catholic paper” out of your records, find your baptismal certificate, and learn the date of your baptism. And then, with appropriate celebration, ponder just what happened to you that day.

Gov. Larry Hogan had declared Saturday Healthcare Heroes Day, and the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds would be flying over as a thank you to those serving on the front lines in the pandemic.

So Catholics, don’t get discouraged. Rather, use this time of deprivation and abstention to awaken a deeper love for the Church in its Eucharistic, symbiotic, and incarnational distinctiveness.

Some days you’re trying to get something done when you hear a terrible crash in the kitchen. You come running and see that your son just spilled sugar cubes all over the floor.

I completed the Exodus program this Easter as part of a fraternity at St. John Parish in Westminster. It changed my life.