I like simple things, like slathering homemade bread with butter moments after it has been pulled out of the oven.

I also like stirring a pot of sourdough starter.

While others may see a creamy yellow, bubbling concoction with a distinctive smell, I imagine pancakes and bread. I anticipate quiet conversations, pleasure, and heavenly life lessons.

Lest you think I’m a bit odd, a Google search of the word “sourdough” produces more than 6.5 million sites.

A whole lot of us have more than a passing interest, it seems.

Our American history books tell us that pioneers understood the great value of sourdough and took extreme care to protect their starters because they were a cheap, dependable and served as a never-ending source of pancakes, biscuits and breads.

In her book, Alaska Sourdough, chef Ruth Allman writes that Alaskan prospectors were unaware of laboratory tests revealing that sourdough contains the greatest amount of protein for its weight and size of comparable foods.

They understood that a 50-pound sack of flour and a sourdough pot could help sustain them through a miserable winter.

Feed your starter and it can live for decades. Share it and it will feed countless people.

There’s more to this story than the satisfaction gained from stirring and baking. When I look at my starter, I see goodness resulting from simplicity and attentiveness. It represents a willingness my husband and I are developing to walk through fear and worries in order to share the most basic elements of our lives.

As I contemplate this Mother’s Day I feel soulful satisfaction, awe, and the growing joy of expanding love as I celebrate being mother to three natural children and a fourth “bonus” child who joins us this year.

“How did this happen?” we regularly ask ourselves. We thought we had the big plan of our lives all figured out. We’d have children, raise them, and enjoy careers. We’d retire someday. Travel. Love our grandchildren.

Then we heard about a girl people called remarkable. We learned that she longed to live in Oak Harbor, attend high school, and to be loved by a family.

We looked at our simple life plan — as well as the simple ingredients we have used to create a home and parent our kids — and we realized very quickly that God was presenting us with a profound question we never imagined answering: “If not you, then who?”

This Mother’s Day I’m learning to trust God in deeper ways when He says we are never to discount the value of our work or our place in the world. We are to do something good for someone and watch for the ways He will use it.