More Encouragement for "Just" Mothers

A week after Jane put up the quote from the "Just a Mother" article, I happened upon another blog post called "The Funny Little Thing About Women's Choice," in which Kelly Crawford, from a Christian perspective, writes  - 

"The reality that few of us are willing to admit is that families need mothers and wives devoted full time to them.....            My girls do have a choice....

A choice to not feel bad about choosing to pour their lives into raising people. A choice to say “no” to what almost everyone around them tells them they should do. A choice to be home-builders, upon which a healthy society is made. A choice to stand with their husbands and create a shelter for him from the battering of the world. A choice to be everything to a few people and, clothed in strength and dignity, to have some left over to care for the needs of others around her."

You can read the entire post *here*.

In fact, one of the commenters on the post, Cindy, had a great word to add too, I thought - 

 

"I think a lot of young women (and older ones, too) think of their success in terms of visibility–what the public can see us doing, what we can get financial and personal standing from–rather than being able to accept that our work’s success can only be judged by those few people who know us. Motherhood and wifehood–womanhood, in fact–is a private thing, but we’ve all been raised to think of ourselves as public property.

If we’re not doing for the collective, we’re not thought to be doing anything at all. But a life outside the home is not the only thing worth striving for. In fact, a family’s life without a warm home as a center–with someone there to KEEP the center warm–is pretty barren."

Sucked Dry!

If you, like me, are ever tempted to think that because you're exhausted by the end of each day after caring for the basic needs of your family that you must be doing something wrong...

or if you feel like all the feeding, clothing, teaching, training, moderating, and caring for your children physically, mentally, and spiritually day in and day out, is KILLING you...

and you feel like you're at your wit's end, and your body's end,
or you just wish this day would end...

Cheer up! That shows you must be doing something right!

Or so says Dr. Stephen Paulson (Professor of Systematic Theology for Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn.), at a recent lecture on Genesis at a family camp for Mt. Carmel Ministries -
(This is taken from the audio track. )

“What God is doing in [your vocations in life] is not “making you happy”.

[Luther] understands that most of us think of our vocations as the form of our happiness, so that vocations in life are there to provide us a goal which, when reached, will actually produce happiness in us.  I can’t tell you how much misery this has created for people!

We’re actually attacking at the key point what is generally assumed to be the case in life, that you are placed in this world and you seek out your niche or vocation in this world in order to become happy! The greatest carnage this has caused is in marriage....

[People think] that marriage as an institution is an engine that is supposed to produce happiness in you as an individual and what happens very quickly to people is that they turn around and say, 'Well this engine isn't working very well here! My happiness is not as high as it was before!' 

[W]e have to come back to what these vocations are actually for
and how they are actually being used...

They are being used to provide an exercise of faith for you.

They are there to actually put you to death.

Your vocations are there for you to die, 

and to die as effectively as possible.

In your family God is actually making a way to create more life and sustain it. That's what your family is there for.  And what it's doing for you as an individual is it's putting you to death.

Vocation is not a "search for happiness," 

rather, it is like the very large sow at the State Fair 

with many teats all being suckled at once, 

with this goal at the end - 

your being sucked dry by the end of the day.

And at the end of the day you will find your joy and your comfort not in that this has made you happy, but that you trust that this is God's good will and that His promise remains."

Now I don't know about you, but that's one of the most real and comforting things I've heard in a long time.

You are JUST a mother!

I stumbled upon this article the other day, and wanted to share it.  It reminds me of G.K. Chesterton's quotes about mothering.

“You’re a stay-at-home mom? What do you DO all day?”

... "Yes, my wife is JUST a mother. JUST. She JUST brings forth life into the universe, and she JUST shapes and molds and raises those lives. She JUST manages, directs and maintains the workings of the household, while caring for children who JUST rely on her for everything. She JUST teaches our twins how to be human beings, and, as they grow, she will JUST train them in all things, from morals, to manners, to the ABC’s, to hygiene, etc. She is JUST my spiritual foundation and the rock on which our family is built. She is JUST everything to everyone. And society would JUST fall apart at the seams if she, and her fellow moms, failed in any of the tasks I outlined.

Yes, she is just a mother. Which is sort of like looking at the sky and saying, “hey, it’s just the sun.”

If you'd like to read the rest, you can find it here:
You're a stay-at-home mom? What do you do all day?  by Matt Walsh

Blog Post Recommended - Gel Pen Faith

This post from the Femina blog  encouraged me once again in my vocation as a mother and homemaker. It is a good reminder of our priorities in normal, ordinary, daily life.  Below is an excerpt, but I think the whole post is worth reading.

"When push comes to shove and it is either the house or the kids, God chooses the kids, and He tells me to. When it is the laundry all done or the kids all loved, it had better be the kids."

"Of course God is honored when I am combining joy with closet organizing. Laughter with clean floors. Gratitude with getting all the dishes done. But you know what? If something has got to go around our house, it better not be my attitude. Because that is the one thing that God actually told me to keep track of."

Celebrate Motherhood - Bumper Sticker

Here is a hilarious bumper sticker about celebrating motherhood.  

Get yours at www.MotherhoodSticker.com

Whatever Your Hands Find To Do

I've heard this quote before but as I read it this morning I was once again encouraged in my daily "normal" vocation.

  "Our foolishness consists in laying too much stress upon the show of works, and when these do not glitter as something extraordinary we regard them as of no value; and poor fools that we are, we do not see that God has attached and bound this precious treasure, namely His Word, to such common works as filial obedience, external, domestic, or civil affairs, so as to include them in his order and command, which he wishes us to accept, the same as though he himself had appeared from heaven. 

    What would you do if Christ himself with all the angels were visibly to descend, and command you in your home to sweep your house and wash the pans and kettles? How happy you would feel, and would not know how to act for joy, not for the work’s sake, but that you knew that thereby you were serving him, who is greater than heaven and earth..."

~ Excerpt from Luther's Sermon on Matthew 9:1-8 ~

He Carries Our Kids Too

Someone just said to me in an email that she is now realizing how life-long parenting is. You go from mostly physical work in the care of your children as infants and toddlers, and then move into the mental and spiritual labor of bearing them in their youth into adulthood. (The latter seems to be by far the harder job, and my oldest is only just turning sixteen next month, so I have a long way to go.)

It seems that as your children grow up, you grow up.  You are no longer the same person. If, by patient continuance and repentance, and in God's grace, you take up your cross daily, deny yourself, following Jesus, then you learn the long slow way how to love and long-suffer with people, especially those closest, in ways that could never be explained to you beforehand.  

“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
And not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Surely they may forget,
Yet I will not forget you."
Isaiah 49:15

Loving and bringing up children is indeed a lifelong business; I believe one of the hardest. In fact it would be too heavy without One who takes our burdens, bears our griefs, and carries our sorrows with us and for us.

Once, when I was upset and despairing about how my children would turn out, my pastor said to me,
"Don't be so proud as to think it's all up to you.  Leave some room for the grace of God, will ya?"