A mother’s epiphany

I seem to have just had a moment of great clarity, of much-needed understanding. Thank you Lord. 

Caring for my daughter Penelope is my job. It seems so obvious but I appear to have not truly understood this in my mind and heart. I’ve been waking most days feeling like I don’t know what to do, somewhat lost and purposeless, thinking, ‘what can I actually get done when Penny is asleep today?’ As if she is some kind of great inconvenience to my productivity. 

But if I consider that I have been given, with my husband Tim, a little human; a life from God to mould, love, pray for, care for, teach everything from scratch, I realise that this is an awesome job full of holy wonder. And yes, of course, incredibly hard, exhausting, and with not much room for selfishness.

I need to not let the pressures and ways of this world infiltrate my thinking, where I begin to believe that I am somehow less and not enough to not also be ‘working’. I look at it — we don’t need any more money. We don’t want for any physical thing. Compared with most of the world we live in absolute luxury. And we are not in this world to chase after earning as much as we can. If we never own a house and that is what God wants for our family, who cares? Not me. 

Why do I feel I must be ‘qualified’ as ‘something’, a title, to be regarded as important, smart, clever, valuable, or any other such thing?

I have let this way of thinking infest my heart and my thoughts without even realising it. I don’t ‘do nothing’, I am not just a ‘stay at home mum’. I do lots! Lots that God gives me each day. I have Penelope to care for at every hour. I have a husband to love and support - to pray for and join in the ministry God gives us. I have a community of God’s people to love and serve, and the rest of the world to love and serve as God directs.

God has shown me that I need to embrace all of this that He has given me and take each day as a new day to ‘work’ in the field He has given me. It may look somedays like staying at home all day and playing with a one year old—feeding her, teaching her, cleaning her, loving her. Each day will change. But this is my job, my very important job. 

Why have I let the world, and more specifically, our particular culture, infest my thoughts so? Praise God for setting me free from these. My worth will never be determined by a title received from a few years of study—although these are good—they don’t make us who we are. My worth is determined by Jesus’ death, life and glory forevermore. My title, written into eternity, is ‘child of God’, and the work He has given me is rich, varied, exciting, hard, beautiful, and pays in full. Thank you Lord, Holy Spirit, for breaking into my stale and negative pattern of thinking, for shining your truth upon the lies I was believing. May I embrace what you have given me today with joy and courage. 

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