I have been mainly silent on social media for the past year, I felt a tug to just step back and learn more. God always seems to take us on twists and turns or get us going full speed in one direction and then change the road map.
After finishing my book I felt emotionally and spiritually drained, like I had nothing else to say or give but a desire to learn more. If I was going to tell others about the Jesus that saved me then I needed to rely more on His word and not just my story. While our testimonies are powerful, it's His words that change lives.
Here I was pregnant with baby number four, continuing our homeschooling and part time traveling and I saw my priorities start shifting more to the mundane and repetitive actions a mom finds herself in. I had been striving to consistently listen to the Bible through a new app and really learn how to understand each chapter but also really trying to learn my new roles as a wife and mother.
I began to see how I had been given this gift to really dig into the daily tasks that run a home. Daily there are dirty dishes in the sink that need to be rinsed and placed into the dishwasher but not before unloading clean dishes from the day before back into their place of rest. Pots and pans that need to be hand washed and placed out to dry while remembering to lay out meat to defrost to cook after the morning chores as my brain recalls that I just made breakfast. My mind drifts to what is needed to throw together another supper and if there is plenty for the next day. Then the dryer buzzer snaps me into the laundry room to switch clothes and then add to the heaping pile of clean clothes that need to be sorted as I hear the baby starting to wake up.
She needs me to change her diaper and reassure her that she's safe as my older two start saying they are ready for a snack as they ask a few questions from their math lessons or what a new word is they are reading. We had our moments of arguing and frustration this morning as I directed them to the dining room table to start our read-out loud-s. I flipped the pages reading about Where Faith Grows, memory verse, science and history as I nurse the baby and sip cold coffee. Some days I get a workout in while the baby naps and the older kids take a break then it's back to schoolwork, switching laundry and making lunch.
Afternoons often consist of entertaining the baby, more diaper changes, sorting laundry or watching it pile up. I always look forward to my cup of coffee in the afternoon as I rock in my recliner as the baby takes another nap and I always stare at the toys scattered all over our living room rug. The toys I walk around like a maze and occasionally vacuum around. My mind realizes that I'm in the very moments I prayed for, the very roles that I longed to be in I just didn't know at the time that it would consist of such mundane and repetitive tasks.
It's been said many times by many people and also said that we should take joy in the tasks we are given such as dirty dishes but I wasn't grateful for piles of laundry and dishes, I was burdened. It wasn't until the mundane and repetitive became my sole purpose that I was humbled; I could finally see how God can use the actions of a mother in her dedication to the littlest of things to equip her when there comes big shifts or detours.
The mundane tasks of diaper changes, keeping food on the plates of her loved ones, clean clothes to overflow the baskets and keeping the rugs vacuumed which she repeatedly does day in and day out are her purpose. They are creating a lived in home where her kids feel loved and safe and that her husband entrust to her. God sees what she can do with it all and she feels herself growing in her faith.
While to some looking in her life may look boring she knows the foundation of her home is growing stronger by her simple tasks that humble her.
