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Parenting Q
& A by Mary Allen A Potpourri of Essays about the Family, the Home, and Parenting |
"Great wealth is in the house of the righteous..." Proverbs 15:6 |
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Q:
What
encouragement do you have for stay at home moms? Day after day
of constant
picking up, wiping runny noses and dirty bottoms, and falling into bed
exhausted
each night, makes me wonder if what I'm doing is making any
difference. A:
It's
making all the difference! Let me answer your plea with a question of
my own:
What can we take with us to Heaven when we die? The
answer is simply, our
children. Those we influence towards Christ. Not our new
vehicle, or our
mortgaged "house beautiful", or anything else that a second income
could buy. In light of Matthew
6:19-21, we need to turn our hearts away from earthly
corruptible things,
and towards God and the values He assigns. In
1
Timothy 6, we see in verse 7 that "we have brought nothing
into the
world, so we cannot take anything out of it either." Verse 10
warns
against the love of money, and verse 11 cites these pursuits
as being
suitable for a man or woman of God: "righteousness, godliness, faith,
love, perseverance and gentleness." As
a stay at home mom,
yes--the need for perseverance and love and faith, etc. is huge! But so
is the
payoff as our children are trained in the ways of the Lord. Every bit
of sweat,
tears and blood you pour into your child is your equity in Heaven--as
we work
to make spiritual and physical provision for our family's needs, they
bloom! We
cultivate within them--as with planting a garden--a thriving
environment in
which God's love grows and magnifies. Don't
ever underestimate your
role as a mother! I also want to say that it's SO normal to feel the
way you
do. We all have times where the tedium of life weighs us down, and we
lose
sight of why we started down this road in the first place. In Titus
2, the older women are told to teach the younger women to
"love their
husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at
home, kind,
..." Wow. God knew there would be times when we'd need encouraged to love
our husbands and
children. It's not a given, but by God's grace and with His help
through prayer
on our part and a willing heart of obedience--He can kindle that
flicker of
mother-love into the flame He intended it to be in the first place. So
don't fall into the trap
of believing that someone else can do your job better. Remember, children
are a gift from the Lord--they are His reward! And if we do
our job, Lord
willing, they will be by our sides in Heaven...along with any other
treasures
we've netted for Him along life's way. What
is more important than
that? Blessings, Mary Rejoicing
in hope... Romans
12:12
About the Author: Mary Allen is a stay-at-home, homeschooling, country-loving mom. She makes her home in the mid-west amidst Border Collies, horses, cows, a horde of chickens, her beloved husband of 16 years and their three girls. She writes articles for several online publications, including her own website, Home-Steeped Hope.
Updated
March 27, 2014 |
