Embracing The Most Important Work

C.S. Lewis once said, "Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work." And I have loved this quote for a long time. It's easy to love this quote until you find it applies to you. Just as it was easy to love my stretch marks before I had them, so it was easy to see the work of motherhood as the greatest gift to humanity until it was my gift to give.
And now I'm here.
As I've stepped into the role of stay at home mom. It doesn't seem so glamorous, not so important. When most of my day is spent sitting feeding a baby or rocking a baby. In a culture focused on works, it's easy to find my identity in nap time. The ultimate show of my worth being what I did during that time. Did I do the laundry, the dishes, did I get a shower in? Sometimes it's the simple task. But as most life transitions, this one again has forced me to reevaluate, where is my worth found. It always seems that this is where I struggle when the season changes. I find myself stripped bare of everything I thought made me, well...Me. And then go about the work of being busy. Trying to fill my life with tasks until I break, and I'm tired, and have nothing left to give, but harsh words and stress.
That's when I have to let go and realize, I yet again have to be rebuilt
Renewed.
Fixing my foundation so that I once again come to the realization that who I am is not dependent on what I do, but whose I am.
Trees grow, not when it is summer and when their leaves are green in all their glory. But they grow when they have been stripped of their leaves and the winter storms come. That is when another ring forms around their trunk and their roots deepen.
The change of seasons grows the trees and so it is with me.
And as my season changes, so I must choose to be like a tree. To let another ring grow around my trunk and sink my roots, so that even more I will find my identity in Him and less in me.
Then I can trust that summer will come again, and somehow the lessons I learn in this time of Momhood will become a gift.
For now I'm going to have to embrace my season of autumn. Where the greatest gift I have is this baby that cuddles on my lap just to hear my heart beat. In the same way I'm going to choose to sit on my heavenly Papa's lap and listen to his heart, remembering where I come from. The laundry may get done. The bathroom may get cleaned, but in the end my most important is to sit with my Father who has called me to sit with this baby. So we're together just gonna sit tight and see where this season takes us.