The love you give them matters more than you know.

Angel 1: Have you watched the way she loves them?

Angel 2: I’ve been watching. It’s beautiful. The patience she finds when she has nothing left to give. The way she chooses softness even on the days that asked everything of her.

Angel 1: She doesn’t see it.

Angel 2: She doesn’t. She thinks she’s failing because she has hard days. She doesn’t realize that the bar she’s holding herself to is impossible. She doesn’t realize that the love she’s pouring into them is shaping who they become.

We have to keep reminding her of what’s actually true.

– Jacqueline Whitney

Angel 1: She measures herself by the moments she’s not proud of.

Angel 2: She does. She’ll spend hours replaying the one time she raised her voice and miss the hundred times she chose calm. That’s how she’s been trained to see herself. We have to keep reminding her of what’s actually true.

Angel 1: What is actually true?

Angel 2: That her children are going to grow up and remember the way it felt to be loved by her. That she’s giving them something she didn’t always have. That she’s the answer to a prayer somewhere, even if she can’t see it. That she’s loving them in a way that’s going to outlast her.

Angel 1: We should keep whispering it to her.

Angel 2: Every day. Until she finally believes us.

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