My wedding anniversary is coming up. Every year midsummer, I think about the vows we made and how we continue to live out those vows. And if I’m being honest, sometimes I think about how we fall short on that.

We’ve all felt the struggle. When you’re sitting in an awkward waiting room, when your kid asks you the same question over and over, when you’re tired at the end of a long day—we struggle to be present. We struggle against the distraction in our pockets, that glowing rectangle that can instantly fix our boredom. I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else. Smartphones are seemingly essential in today’s world, but they also make it so hard to stay focused on the people around us. We are easily pulled away from reality, easily disinterested, and easily tempted to avoid giving someone our full attention.

“Daddy! Daaaaaaaaaaaa-deeee! Daaaaaaaa-daaaaa! Dada! DADA!” My two-year-old cries out in the middle of the night. We can hear her over our audio monitor getting more frantic. She is unsure if this will be the time she’s abandoned or if one or both of her parents are on the way. My husband and I both know she won’t go back to sleep unless one of us enters her room, lets her know we heard her, and gives her comfort. My husband gets up to make sure she gets back to a good night of sleep.

May isn’t just the month of Mother’s Day; it is also Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month. Before I became a mother, I thought that the conversation surrounding maternal mental health simply wasn’t all that different from everyday normal mental health conversations. I’m not sure there was any way to prepare me for the shift that would take place immediately after giving birth. I’ve started to tell others that I see God’s faithfulness so clearly in labor, delivery, and postpartum—but what I don’t often say is exactly why.

In college, I attended a Bible study hosted at a pastor’s home. One week, he said our homework was to make a list of our biggest questions about faith, and we’d discuss them and seek answers in Scripture. So the following week, a group of twenty-year-olds bombarded him with all our burning questions. Can you guess which topic was most common?

It was a month or so after our second child was born, and my almost two-year-old decided he wanted to join the rest of the family and stop sleeping too. Fighting bedtime, skipping his nap, waking up at night, you name it. We were all feeling cranky and out of sorts.

I’ve never been a person who really relied on or noticed patterns in my life. I never struggled with feeling too scheduled or the opposite feeling of overwhelmed with no structure. That is, until I became a parent. Our first daughter was born during our year of vicarage, and so, when I left my in-person job for maternity leave, I also left that position permanently. Navigating being a new mom with no weekly or daily sense of rhythm (except the endless time-loop of feeding every two to three hours), I felt that I needed to mark time passing in a new way.

“In 2024, I plan to . . .” Fill in the blank. Maybe you’re hoping to exercise more, eat healthier, start a new job, go on a big family trip, spend more time with your spouse, spend less time on your phone, finally finish that house project, read the Bible every day, join the church choir, make a friend, call your parents more, and so on.

I never had any interest in watching the 1946 James Stewart Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, until college. Many adults and teens in my life had droned on about how boring they found this particular movie, so when one friend insisted we watch it as a group, I was ready to pretty much zone out. Instead, I was blown away. Now, for my husband (who also watched it for the first time that day) and me, it’s a tradition. (Though we do have to overlook the whole thing about people becoming angels when they die, and then angels having to do good works to earn their wings.) As George Bailey rushes into his home full of life and cheer, I am always holding back at least one tear. And maybe one or two spill over. Why does this happy ending elicit a tearful response?

We say the word thanks a lot in a day. We thank our spouse for filling up our coffee, we end emails with the word thanks, and we thank people for holding the door for us. As parents, we teach our kids to say thank you when someone gives them a cookie, compliments their new dress, or shares a toy with them. Giving thanks is actually a pretty common occurrence.