A Motherhood Worth Pondering

Stephanie Quesnelle considers the small but impactful moments that mean the most — and rarely make it to the social-media feed.

We recently celebrated my fifth baby’s Baptism and there’s a perfect photo, all seven of us lined up and the 2-year-old at the end quietly with her hands folded. I love this photo, but it reminds me of an entirely different Baptism, with an entirely different photo.

My boys are 16 months apart, so the older one was about 18 months old at the Baptism. And the only family photo I have is me, holding a newborn, my 3-year-old daughter smiling sweetly next to me, and then my husband, holding the toddler screaming bloody murder without shoes *or* socks on.

The photo of the Baptism ceremony? He’s charging away from the baptismal font at full speed.

Not photographed? His swan dive off the main altar onto the marble aisle floor, the one I didn’t hear or see because I was focused on a Baptism.

Absolutely embarrassing, but also all too real.

I almost didn’t share the photos at all, but they were the only photos I had. So, I shared them, knowing that most of the Catholic mom world is beautifully curated: Perfectly matching children smiling outside of Mass, finely decorated homes for feast days, stacks of Catholic books read daily. The comments I got were amazing, hilarious, and a reminder that motherhood isn’t picture-perfect. In fact, when we look at the Blessed Mother, we don’t even know much about how she raised Jesus.

What We Know About Mary

Scriptures tell us about the following: her fiat, the Visitation, the necessity of journeying to Bethlehem, the flight to Egypt, the Presentation. We hear about how she found Jesus in the Temple and directed Him at the wedding feast. We also know she was present on Calvary.

That’s it, though.

We don’t get a parenting guide from Mary, other than her undying love and surrender to God. There’s no 15-step potty training method, no meal plans, no real content to follow.

There is, however, one idea that Luke repeats twice.

Mary pondered/treasured these things in her heart (Luke 2:19 and Luke 2:51).

She didn’t publish or preach; she pondered.

The Pressure for Visibility

I’m not against sharing faith online. Pope Leo XIV calls the Internet the digital continent and calls us to evangelize (Magnifica Humanitas 238). But there’s a difference between sharing honestly and performative faith, and sometimes that line is blurry. When the liturgical calendar becomes a content calendar, it’s possible that things have gone awry.

Slowly, as these photos and reels proliferate our media feeds, a small voice can start to make us doubt the importance of our quiet actions, the ones that no one sees.

Pondering is not Passive

When Mary pondered, it might not have been just a quiet sitting still and accepting God’s will. In her fiat, Mary first questions, “How can this be?” Pondering is an interior disposition of sitting with something that you don’t understand and not trying to just let it go.

We love to imagine what Mary thought in those moments; entire songs, poems, and books are devoted to exploring what might have been. In fact, one of the sweetest Christmas books we read is Tonight You Are my Baby, a reminder that Mary enjoyed the newborn Jesus but knew she was going to share Him as King of the Universe.

However, that tension is not something Mary documented. It’s not shared by the Gospel writers. It’s not captured in letters or biographies. Mary held onto these conflicting realities, her baby and her King, but it was borne quietly.

That kind of hiddenness takes more strength than visibility does.

To ponder is a gift. It’s a chance to wrestle with our own realities. The beauty of Mary’s quiet motherhood inspires me at times to put down the phone. To finish living in a moment with my kids instead of thinking about a potential social media post. To ponder is an action toward wholeness, not a passive action of begrudging acceptance.

Think about it yourself: What have been the most impactful moments of your own formation? Of your relationships with your children?

Were they loud moments? Were they lengthy conversations? Did you know it was even happening?

Or were they quiet moments, small moments, moments that only became apparent in their importance well after the fact. Maybe it was your son watching your husband buy you ice cream after a particularly challenging first trimester pregnancy. Or your daughter witnessing you apologize to another kid for losing your temper. These small acts that are fleeting in time, but pack a formative punch, don’t usually make it to social media.

The next time you feel like you’re not doing enough because your family’s faith life doesn’t look like someone’s social media feed, remember that the most important things in your domestic church are things that no one will see. And those are the moments that you will ponder in your heart.

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Copyright 2026 Stephanie Quesnelle
Images: Canva