What We Do Matters

Pushing Through the Hard

We live in a world that expects and longs for instant gratification – so few people are willing to push through hard things and persevere. This can be especially seen in motherhood, as so many become frustrated, filled with anxiety and discontentment, or throw in the towel, leaving someone else to do the job.

I recently listened to a podcast that encouraged listeners to view parenthood as a marathon, not a sprint. Being a mom is being in it for the long haul: day in and day out, slowly, painfully, teaching and training and repeating. It is patiently enduring through correcting again….and again….and again. Discipline and discipleship isn’t a one and done thing. We don’t correct one time and expect it is fixed. If we enter into it with a sprinting mentality, we quickly grow frustrated and weary as it drags on…and on….and on. If we view it instead as a marathon, we can view it with the end in sight and push on to the end. Gloria Furman encourages us to view motherhood “with eternity stamped on our eyeballs.” Eternity is the big-picture lens with which we need to view our every-day life. These daily hardships and “battles” matter, it isn’t just about getting through today: it is about impacting eternity. We are raising eternal beings whose souls will go on forever.

Purposeful Pain

As a birth doula I often encourage moms to view the pain of childbirth as purposeful. It is one of the few times in life that you aren’t just in pain for no reason: you are enduring something painful for the sake of a beautiful new baby. If you cut your hand or break your arm, you are in pain with no purpose but when you are in labor, you are experiencing pain to bring forth new life. It isn’t meaningless, it has a purpose that is hugely rewarding. In the same way, as we struggle with hard days and hard seasons as a mom, we know that the hard isn’t purposeless. The hard has meaning and is bringing forth new life – raising up the next generation, pointing souls in the right direction. This view of the hard can help us to endure, to wake up again tomorrow with renewed energy and dedication.

Mothers, what we are doing matters and it matters more deeply than we know or often feel.