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There once was a family with a mother, a father, four children and a dog. The mother thought her children were amazing, simply because they were hers. The children practiced scrubbing a tub without falling in, making a meal that could actually be eaten and how to behave in public. Each child was different, unique, and the mother tried hard to match the right cheers to the right child.

Mostly she wanted to teach them to love. Love God. Love each other. Just love. With all that was in them. This took up lots of time, and some days, amidst the din and fracas, the mother was so tired she could barely smile. Those were the days she tried not to think of all the ways she was capable of messing up her children, scary days—days she thought they'd be preschoolers forever.

Suddenly, overnight it seemed, the two oldest girls were practically grown, and one day they and their two younger siblings got a new baby sister. But then a disaster hit, unexpectedly, as all disasters are. The mother, catastrophically ill, near death, unconscious for weeks and weeks in the hospital—could no longer mother.

While she slept, and the father and doctors fought valiantly to keep her alive, an army swooped in to help the struggling family, which is another tale entirely.

Word has it the girls quivered a bit, of course, questioned a fair amount and tried on their very own faith, smoothing the seams and wiggling in, since it fit a bit differently from the family model they'd always worn.

The 15-year-old went to her first high school homecoming while her mother slept. Carefree fun yielded to list-making of people needing thank you notes and survival strategies in the suddenly matriarchless home.

One day a family friend asked, "What are you dong?" The girl stopped her sweeping. "The cleaning volunteers are on their way," the friend said.

"But … the floor's very dirty," the girl replied, cleaning for the cleaners.

When she'd been a small girl of 6, her grandmother had feared she would be hopelessly allergic to work, but instead she'd learned by age 11 to keep the domestic fires burning, almost as well as her mother. While she could work, she found she also loved going to the ball and was rather the life of the party. And yet, tenderness and compassion towards her younger siblings flowed.

"How ya doing today, honey?" she asked her younger sister through a hug.

Meanwhile, well-meaning, concerned adults held meetings and discussed putting the homeschooled, now teacherless, children quickly into school.

"No," she cried to her mother's friend one day. "I won't let that happen. I'll teach them," she said. "I can do it." She didn't have to carry out her plan, but she was prepared to nonetheless, her mother's values having seeped into her.

Perhaps the most astonishing change in the girl took place in her heart. She'd silently seethed and been most forlorn about the idea of a newborn taking up residence now, at this point. It was all so, well, embarrassing. Besides, look what this baby caused. But she diapered some, fed some, rocked a bit, and grinch-like, found her heart enlarging—from cold to crazy for the baby, which amazes her still.

What of the eldest sister, you ask? Well, she had just settled into college when the stormy night hit. She rushed to her family when the dark was new. At her mother's bedside, at her father's right hand, the girl spent sleepless nights, then returned to her classes, her life—a body one place, a heart in two.

Stay or go? she agonized. Her future, what she'd been waiting for. Her family. She agonized some more. Many had offered to care for the babe; many did in the early dark. Then she knew.

"This baby needs to be cared for in her home, with her family," she said. "Besides, my voice and my mother's sound alike. It will make it easier for her to bond with Mother if she bonds now with me. If Mother lives."

She packed. Signed withdrawal papers. Gave up something she wanted and a year of her life. And came home. Motherless herself, she now mothered.

She also noticed her 9-year-old sister, stoic instead of tearful. She climbed in bed with her one night.

"Honey, it's OK to cry," she whispered. "Let's have a cry party," she said, stroking her hair.

She drove the baby to her sleeping mother at the hospital, let them feel each other breathe, the baby and the real-mother sleeping together for a moment. Then the sister-mother took the baby home and impersonated bits of her mother's life, writing messages on the greeting chalkboard, planning birthday parties.

The most astonishing thing for this girl is the slide from sister-love to sister-mother-love, so deeply did she grieve for her siblings' pain. Hard circumstances indeed, but a friend said, "I often overheard her tell people that we do not grieve like those without hope."

Then, night turned its blackest, they said their good-byes, but somehow, miraculously, dawn came, and the mother opened her eyes.

Moral: Whether our children grow up to make poor choices or ones that wow us into the next galaxy, where they "just love" beyond our wildest imagination, every mothering moment matters, inadequacies and all. But breathe; God loves them enough to provide for them and through them when we cannot.

Lindsey O'Connor, author of If Mama Goes South We're All Going With Her (Bargain Books, 2003) freelance journalist and speaker, loves it when a story is true. This one is, the story above is hers, and her eldest daughters are Jacquelyn and Claire, who make her smile indeed and still help her with her resulting limitations.

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