Sharon Eubank is the first counselor in the Relief Society General Presidency and the director of LDS Charities, the humanitarian organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She loves history, homemade pie, and crossword puzzles.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland spoke once about the motherly characteristics of Christ the Messiah:

“No love in mortality comes closer to approximating the pure love of Jesus Christ than the selfless love a devoted mother has for her child. When Isaiah, speaking messianically, wanted to convey Jehovah’s love, he invoked the image of a mother’s devotion. ‘Can a woman forget her sucking child?’ he asks. …

“This kind of resolute love ‘suffereth long, and is kind, … seeketh not her own, … but … beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.’ Most encouraging of all, such fidelity ‘never faileth.’ ‘For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed,’ Jehovah said, ‘but my kindness shall not depart from thee’” (“Behold Thy Mother,” Oct. 2015 general conference).On that Iraqi plain, motherhood suddenly became defined for me as those who behave the way good mothers do.

My life has taught me three things that changed my mind about Mother’s Day:

My skills are never wasted.

My heart—not my present circumstances—determines my blessings.

I am a mother because I behave as a mother.

To my younger self who was full of misery holding a potted flower and to all the women who are uncomfortable on Mother’s Day, I would say: “Don’t let sadness obscure the view. Your covenants have already paved your path. Keep going. You are doing better than you know.” What might the Lord say to us? I think He would throw His arms around us and let us know we are worthy enough to keep going and our sacrifices have been acceptable before Him. He would tell us He is reserving for us all that is in our hearts, unspoken things that only He could know. He would say that He sees us and all we do behind the scenes, that we are not invisible to Him. He would ask of us the same thing He asked Peter: “Lovest thou me? … Feed my lambs. … Feed my sheep” (John 21:15–17).

So take your flower or chocolate or begonia or whatever it is. Stand up with a smile whether or not you have borne children, whether or not your kids are doing fine at this exact moment, whether or not things happened the way you thought they would. It turns out we really are all mothers in Zion. We have a work to do. It stretches into eternity. And like the Master we follow, our love “never faileth” (1 Corinthians 13:8; Moroni 7:46).