Invisible Mom

**A few days late for Mothers Day, to all the moms....***

Invisible Mom
By Author Unknown

It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the
lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while
I'm on the phone and ask to be taken to the store.

Inside I'm thinking, 'Can't you see I'm on the
phone?' Obviously not; no one can see if I'm on the phone, or cooking,
or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner,

because no one can see me at all. I'm invisible. The invisible Mom.
Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more:
Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this?
Some days I'm not a pair of hands;
I'm not even a human being. I'm a clock to ask, 'What time is it?'
I'm a satellite guide to answer, 'What number is the Disney Channel?' I'm a car
to order, 'Right around 5:30, please.'

I was certain that these were the hands that once
held books and the eyes that studied history and the
mind that graduated summa cum laude - but now they had
disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She's
going, she's going, she's gone!

One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the
return of a friend from England . Janice had just gotten back from a
fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was
sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well.

It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself as I looked down at my
out-of-style dress; it was the only thing I could find that was clean.
My unwashed hair was pulled up in a hair clip and I was afraid I could
actually smell peanut butter in it. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when

Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, 'I brought
you this.' It was a book on the great
cathedrals of Europe .

I wasn't exactly sure why she'd given it to me until I read her
inscription: 'To Charlotte , with admiration for the
greatness of what you are building when no one sees.'

In the days ahead I would read - no, devour - the
book. And I would discover what would
become for me, four life-changing
truths, after which I could pattern my
work:

No one can say who built the great cathedrals - we have no record
of their names. These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would
never see finished. They made great sacrifices and expected no credit.

The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the
eyes of God saw everything.

A legendary story in the book told of a rich man

who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw
a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and
asked the man, 'Why are you spending so much time carving that bird
into a beam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it.'

And the workman replied, 'Because God sees.'
I closed the book, feeling the
missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering
to me, 'I see you, Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day,

even when no one around you does. No act of kindness you've done, no
sequin you've sewn on, no cupcake you've baked, is too small for me to
notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can't
see right now what it will become.'

At times, my invisibility feels like an
affliction . But it is not a disease that is erasing my life.
It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the
antidote to my strong, stubborn pride. I keep the right perspective when I

see myself as a great builder. As one of the people
who show up at a job that they will never see
finished, to work on something that their name will
never be on.

The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever
be built in our lifetime, because there are so few people willing to
sacrifice to that degree.

When I really think about it, I don't
want my son to tell the friend he's bringing home from college for
Thanksgiving, 'My mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade
pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all
the linens for the table.' That would mean I'd built a shrine or a monument
to myself.

I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there
is anything more to say to his friend, to add, 'You're gonna love it
there.'

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We
cannot be seen if we're doing it right. And one day, it is very
possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at
the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of
invisible women.