I became a mother at 27 years old. I took to it. I was never a child who wanted to hold babies like many of my friends did. I was happy to see babies across the room, feeling no desire to take one in my arms, to try to talk to them, or to even take all that much interest in them. I honestly wasn’t sure how strong my maternal instinct would be, given that I didn’t babysit or have younger siblings, and in fact, the first diaper I ever changed in my life was the inaugural diaper that my firstborn dirtied.

To say that I was unprepared for motherhood is an understatement, yet the moment they placed that chubby little newborn in my arms, God’s grace covered me. I knew what to do. I knew how to start. And I loved this new role that completely took over my life.

Three years later, our second baby arrived. We entered a precious era of small children underfoot. Four years down the road, our third little doll made her appearance. Those little years were sacred. The blessings were constant; the exhaustion was real. It was fun.

I met that first baby 21 years ago, and I find myself back in the realm of mothering a small child. When Ivy came to us at 11 weeks old, I wasn’t sure if I would remember how to do this, but I did. God’s grace, again, was sufficient, and now the sounds of little running feet fill our home once again. We have grey hair and pills, and this era of child-raising feels like a different lifetime. She is my fourth child, and she has very different parents than our other three kids had. There’s really no getting around that fact. Not only that, but her siblings are busy teenagers with plenty of things going to keep us all running, pulling Ivy along with us like a little kite caught in a breeze.

But I’ve been struck lately by an important truth about her bright little life. She will only be four one time. This is her only childhood. As a mom, I’m on my fourth round of four years old, but not her. Everything is new and sparkling and beautiful and exciting, and it makes round four of littleness just as achingly exquisite as ever for me, her grateful, tired mom.

I don’t intend to sugar-coat motherhood here. It’s a bold, devastating, beautiful, demanding, earth-shattering endeavor that often leaves women feeling like we’re failing. We struggle in various ways, and many of them aren’t even related to being moms, but being wives, being friends or daughters or employees or dealing with our own faults and failures in various areas. But one thing we can never forget, no matter what we’re up against: we have children right next to us who just have one childhood, and this is it. I don’t say this to pile on guilt, but to encourage. In the middle of the mess of life, we are stewarding human beings’ childhoods, and that matters so much more than we sometimes remember when we’re tired and feeling cranky and wishing for this or that. God has called us to something holy here, in our kids’ littleness.

We can easily wish the time away, waiting for this phase or that to end. But this is their one childhood, and it goes by so very quickly. I honestly am not sure that I’ve gained that much maternal wisdom between baby number one back in 2005 and baby number four. Sometimes I feel that I know less than ever. But one thing I know for sure is that Ivy’s only going to be four one time, and I ask for God’s grace once again, to help me truly cherish the one childhood of my little latecomer.