One Sunday afternoon, I decided to make a double batch of lasagna. We would enjoy a nice Sunday dinner, and I could freeze some loaf pans for easy meals in the coming weeks. I bought two kinds of meat, sauteed a bunch of veggies to hide in the sauce, and shredded cheese until I worked up a sweat. Finally, the moment arrived, and I presented the homemade bread, the roasted vegetables, and finally, the pièce de résistance to my kids.
“This is yucky.”
But it has pork and Italian sausage.
“I don’t like this stringy stuff.”
I hand-grated that pecorino romano and almost lost a fingertip.
I should have known. It’s often the meals I am most excited about, the meals that are new to little taste buds, that they appreciate the least.
Only days before, I was in the adoration chapel, praying with the Mystery of the Agony in the Garden. I was reflecting on the idea that Jesus not only understood and accepted the immense physical and mental anguish coming His way, but He also knew just how often this sacrifice of His love would be disregarded, ignored, or outright mocked. Jesus knows all of us, even those of us 2,000 years removed from His death, and could foresee that despite his suffering, not everyone would accept His mercy. Some would look at His gift and flat out reject it.
How could He be so humble? How could He persist, knowing that what He did would not be given the awe and reverence it deserves? But Jesus does not rub His pain in our faces. He does not passive aggressively remind us that He did all of this for us and demand our gratitude in return. He simply presents the gift of Himself to us, humbly lays out His love for us, and leaves it for us to accept it.
As moms, we enter into so many of our sacrifices with the potential for rejection. There are countless offerings that our children will not thank us for—sleepless nights, changes to our bodies, financial challenges, snacks made then dumped on the floor, sticky mouths wiped, etc. We pray with our kids and teach them about the Lord; we slog through an hour every week, missing much of the Mass ourselves, with no guarantee that they will love Jesus, too. We prioritize after-school activities over our own anniversary trip, with the possibility that our kids may one day lament that we never took them on big family vacations.
Predicting whether any of our sacrifices—both those we enjoy and those we white knuckle our way through—will be well received is impossible. Inevitably, many things we do for them that cost our time, mental capacity, or financial resources will be things they don’t appreciate or will even outright complain about. But Jesus knows what that feels like, and He has shown us how to persist in love. He knows the risk of loving and being rejected. When He offers Himself for us and we turn away, He prays for us. He forgives us. He dies for us anyway.
While I want to teach my children appropriate gratitude and manners, I need to lower my expectations about how much my children will recognize and appreciate me. (And sorry, Mom. Only now do I realize how little I thanked you.) Do I have Jesus’ spirit of generous self-gift toward others, particularly my children? Do I allow my sacrifices to go unappreciated without complaining when people do not recognize my kindness? Can I just make a darn lasagna and not build resentment in my heart that my kids do not see the thought and time that went into the meal?
When we feel that what we do for our children is unappreciated or unnoticed, remember Jesus accepted a painful scourging, a mockery of justice, and a humiliating death—knowing that many would never even acknowledge it and that all of us would still turn away from Him through sin. He didn’t complain. He didn’t beg for attention. He just prayed, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.”
