I have this gratitude calendar I’ve been keeping all year. It was something impressed on my heart last Christmas to do, and every day for the last year I have been reading one piece of Scripture and writing down the “gifts” of that day. {Side note here…if you haven’t read Ann Voskamp’s “1000 Gifts” you must finish this post and then go buy it and read it ASAP! It’s amazing, life changing and every woman needs it! Click on the link and it will take you to her page.}
Some days it’s simple things, like a house full of clean laundry, or RX’ing a workout, or a run with a friend. Some days its big things like vacation time, memories with the kids or an amazing event with my husband I want to remember. Big or small they all amount to gifts that I am grateful for. And every time I write them down I find my heart swelling with gratitude for another day to enjoy these gifts.
I spent today shuffling different children all over creation! No literally, I spent a large part of my day in the car chauffeuring children, and not all of them my own, to different locations. Preschool carpool, orthodontist office, lunch dates, pick up lines, store pick ups, etc. You get the point…..I was in the car all day.
I went to reflect on my day and I began to write, “I get to be a stay at home mom.” Then I paused.
You see for years I was a “working outside the home mom.” {All us moms are working moms! Who doesn’t stop working as a mom?!?!} And my hearts deepest desire was to have days like today.
As I crawled into bed, about to let myself get grumpy from being tired from the day, my heart needed a reminder that the things I have today are the result of prayers I prayed years ago. The faithfulness I see in my life didn’t happen overnight. It took years of openness to His plan for my life to unfold, rather than resentment that my desires weren’t being met instantaneously.
What also got me thinking tonight is how much this mom needs other moms, and how much other moms need this mom. When I was younger, and far more foolish, I used to think it had to be me against them. (Them being anyone I was jealous of, who thought differently than me, who did life opposite of me, etc.) Now, I am so terribly grateful for the work all different women do.
Because in the hustle and bustle of life, on days like today, we can’t do it without one another. Well, we can’t do it well without one another. You see my sister in law {who rocks it as a teacher “working outside of the home mom”} needed me to run her kids around, and I needed her to be in school teaching kids.
This mom gig, it’s not for the faint of heart. And it’s not done well by those of us who close off our hearts to one another. All those years I wasted sheltering my heart from the hurt other women may potentially cause me, was really to my demise. The loser was me. I lost time building relationships and seeing the worth of other women, not for what they do, but for who they were created to be.
So tonight, to the woman sitting at her computer screen crunching numbers for a financial report she’s giving in the morning to a board room,
or the woman with swollen feet and swollen belly counting contractions before she delivers her firstborn in the wee hours,
or the attorney who falls asleep with a legal brief in one hand and her son’s math homework she was checking in the other,
or the nurse finishing rounds tonight and waiting for the sunrise to go home and make breakfast before sending kids off to school,
or the architect with elaborate blue prints strewn across her dining room table,
or the teacher with Post-It notes littering her lesson plan book and cutting out pictures for a lesson tomorrow while she watches a baby monitor of her daughter sleeping,
or the homeschooling mama online researching lessons for the week,
or the mama with 4 babies under 4 who just wants to shower alone and savor a huge piece of chocolate she doesn’t have to share with anyone.
or the mama who tucks in three little babes to sleep and her heart takes pause for the one she can’t tuck in tonight,
or the woman reading this who aches with the loneliness of heart as she awaits a baby not yet hers. Wondering when God will answer her prayers for a family, and waiting ever still.
I see you.
I give thanks for you.
Because we’re all just women doing our thing. Trying to be the best we can be with what we’re given today.
Knowing in the depth of our souls, no matter how much we ring out our lives in service and sacrifice to our families, we will always want to be more. We’ll always wonder if we were enough, we’ll always questions ourselves. Yet this we can be sure of, we were made to do this life of womanhood and motherhood together.
Let’s unite our hearts on our similarities, and not our differences.
Let’s live out this life of grace with dignity and honor and trust in the Father’s goodness to bestow abundant grace for all our failures.
Let’s rest our weary heads down tonight and just give thanks. For whatever today held we give thanks, for today we held grace.
Jesus loves you. And so do I.
