The other day as I was picking up the same toys for the hundredth time that day, I started questioning the meaning of life.
Specifically, MY life.
When I was teaching, I had 30 lives every hour to try to effect. So many opportunities to make a difference! 150 students per year, not to mention the kids not in my classes that befriended me. At that same time, we were working with the youth at our church. Wow! How could I NOT feel like a productive member of society?!
These days, it seems like all I do is clean up messes that will be made again the next day (or hour, or in 10 minutes), wash clothes that will be dirtied again, and prepare food for people who will be hungry again in a few hours. What's the point of it all? Am I just totally wasting my life? Who, exactly, is all my labor benefiting?
Then I took a deep breath.
First of all, God designed me, and He doesn't waste HIS time.
Second, I know I AM doing more than just maintaining the norm. Sometimes it's pretty subtle, but it's there. I'll take the opportunities given to me - like helping a new mom realize that there are very few breastfeeding "rules". If she wants to nurse that baby on just one side per feeding, so be it! Okay, it's a little thing, but it made me very happy. Thanks, CC, for making me feel useful!
And if those two items are too fleeting for me to remember in the future, there's always the clincher: I am taking care of my kids, trying to help them grow into the best people they can be. Maybe THEY will majorly benefit society. That means that being a MOM may truly be the most important way of benefiting society after all.
Like a waterfall in slow motion, Part One
1 year ago
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3 comments:
That is beautiful! You wrote everything I have thought each and every day! Sometimes it DOES seem so menatenous, over and over and over...but I do feel like there are so few years we have with our kids and if that means a couple of years of stress, which leads up to a lifetime of family love, then so be it! Good blog! sara
Being a mom is pretty important. If you need a reminder, that little girl who was "mewling and puking in her nurses arms" five years ago is heading off to school in a few days with skills she learned at home from a couple of dedicated, loving parents. So take a bow as you enter the second act of parenting with the role of "mom of school aged kid(s)". You've done well in the first act, which continues to run concurrently with the start of act 2.
And, if you need further encouragement about being "on the sidelines" in respect to being a woman who may not get the limelight BUT influences greatly someone else who does, look at Deborah in Judges. She was a very influential woman but if you look into the "hall of fame" in Hebrews 11, you'll see Barak listed there, but not Deborah--she pushed him to go to war like God told him to do....Anyways. Beth Moore inspired me on that one, hope it helps you too!!
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