The Monastery of Motherhood

Oh, squishy baby snuggles!  Tiny arms!  Innocent smiles and the ability to calm them by holding them because I am just their whole world!  Cute toddler first words and first steps!  Funny preschooler insights and imaginations!  Motherhood is lovely.  Breathtakingly precious.  Take it from my emotional mothering self.  There are times I just cry because it's so sweet!

And mixed in with that sweetness, there's a lot that's tough too.  Waking up in the middle of the night for the second time to answer hungry baby cries while my husband sleeps; waking up in the morning after that to a full day with energetic toddlers; seeing that bathroom I just finally got around to cleaning get dirty again far too soon; cleaning up a potty training accident for the third time that day; listening to angry cries as I calmly discipline.  Oh it is hard to stay calm while doing that disciplining sometimes!  And hard to keep a good attitude when the mess that will never be cleaned if I don't do it threaten to overwhelm me.

But I heard a phrase once that has really come alive for me as we've added our third baby to the home this winter: "the monastery of motherhood."  It is in a way.  It is a place that God is using to burn the selfishness off of me.  Everyday I have a dozen opportunities to kill my selfishness.  I can't say I succeed at every one of those moments (or really even half of them some days!), but oh it is growing sweeter and sweeter to rest in God's strength to do so.  Truly giving Him my moments as a "living sacrifice" to serve the "least of these" I find nearest at hand.  Oh it's nothing glamorous enough for a Nobel prize or even a salary, but "they shall reap a harvest if they faint not," right?  It's a life's work really and I'm just 4 years in, but I am finding such hope and rest for my soul in knowing that this is what God designed to refine me.