You are not invisible in this. God sees every single moment. The love you’re pouring into them is being witnessed. The kind of parent you’re becoming is being formed in the small, unseen acts that no one else is counting.

You are doing more than you know. Here’s why your efforts aren’t going unnoticed.

• the prayers you whisper over them while they’re sleeping
• the patience you find when you have nothing left to give
• the moments you choose softness when you wanted to snap
• the way you put their needs before your own without thinking about it

the moments you let them be little, even when you needed them to grow up faster

– Jacqueline Whitney

• the times you wanted to fall apart but held it together for them
• the dinners you made when you were too tired to eat
• the questions you answered for the hundredth time without losing your kindness
• the way you do it differently than it was done to you
• the times you apologized to them when you didn’t have to

• the moments you let them be little, even when you needed them to grow up faster
• the love you give them on days no one is giving anything to you
• the quiet decisions you make to break cycles they’ll never know existed
• the way you keep showing up, every day, even on the days you’re running on empty

Jacqueline Whitney is the author Held: A 50 Day Devotional For Parents and All That You Deserve.