I’ve been thinking about my role as a mom lately. I’ve been pretty overwhelmed and struggling a bit. It is easy to get lost in the shuffle, especially in this life with toddlers and babies. Everyone is sick for weeks on end, playdates are canceled, you don’t make it to church, your husband picks up the grocery order for the week- it’s been 2.5 since you spoke to another adult besides your spouse.
Add to that broken sleep, because baby is teething, and things can quickly spiral into overwhelm and exaustion. Its easy to get to the place where you wonder if you can do this for another day- and why am I doing this at all??
As a mom there are so many things you do everyday that go unnoticed and completly unappreciated. Chances are that your children will never notice that you wiped the refridgerator clean, or that you vacuumed the dust and dog hair up. Your kids will probably never say thank you for cleaning the bathroom, or folding all the laundry. They probably won’t express gratitude for all of the effort you put into meal planning, grocery shopping and cooking nutritious food.
The truth is that when you do all of those things every day – its normal. Kids don’t notice, because its what mom always does, everyday. And I think thats the point.
We aren’t doing all that we do as moms to be appreciated, or to hear “Thank-you” from our children. Ever if we never hear expressed gratitude from our children we will have done our job as mothers.
This is my job. Nurturing, training, providing a clean and safe home, food to nourish their bodies, all of these things are my responsibility as their mom (along with a host of others!) It’s not just my responsibility but also my privilege to get to raise these amazing beautiful children, who will grow up into adults who will go out and have their own beautiful lives and families. (Which is my ultimate goal as a mom, to raise my children to go out and be ready for their own lives and families!)
I’ve been mulling over this since July 4th, when I was thinking about fireworks, and the way my parents always made the holiday fun and special with fireworks… And that I never really thought to be thankful for that as a child- how they sacrificed and spent money on all those extra things, and all of the everyday things that my parents did to take care and provide for us. I definitely took a lot of that for granted when I was younger. It wasn’t until I became a parent that I really started to see all the things my parents did for us.
I guess this is all to say that while we can easily feel unappreciated and not seen as moms. But we don’t do our job as moms to be appreciated .
Even if we never hear gratitude expressed from our children for the things that we do every single day, we can can rest assured that with Gods strength and grace we will have done our best, and that He sees all that we are doing, and that’s what really matters. We can find satisfaction that we will give account for all that we do one day, and all of the little things that make up our whole lives right now will not be forgotten or unseen.
“For the eyes of the man are before the eyes of the Lord, and he pondereth all his goings.” Proverbs 5:21
Loving My Littles 