It is my calling- motherhood...

"I have found that embracing God's call to motherhood once and for all has brought me great peace.  Instead of seeing fusses and messes as irritations in my day, for instance, I am more likely to see them as opportunities to train my children to be peacemakers and to learn to be responsible for their own messes.  Instead of resenting the interruptions in my schedule, I am more likely to accept them as divine appointments.  More and more, I have learned to see my children through the eyes of God and to accept the stages of growth through which he has designed them to grow." "Mission of Motherhood"

I am currently reading this book and am loving it.  As a stay-at-home mom it is so easy to get caught up in the drudgery of motherhood.  Whining children, fighting children, defiance, training, training, TRAINING...it is so easy for a mother to want to just yank out the few strands of hair left on her head.  So as I am reading this book and learning I have realized that motherhood is a calling...God has CALLED me to do it.  It's not easy...it's a calling...but God blessed me with children therefore I KNOW without a shadow of a doubt that God has called me to it.  Once you look at motherhood this way, you realize that when your idea of how you want your life to be, gets disrupted, you won't let that frustrate you or make you mad...you will to "die to yourself and your desires" so that Christ may live through you.  For example (as given in the book Misson of Motherhood), when you are giving your kids a bath and they jump in the tub, playfully, and splash bubbles and water all over you and creation...a lot of times (depending on the day we have had) we will react in frustration..."You guys!!!  I didn't want to get totally soaked and I didn't want to walls to get soaked either!!".  Why would a mom react that way?  Because in our minds of how we want our lives to be...we would rather not have soap and bubbles all over our clothes and walls!  We want our lives and homes to be neat, tidy and QUIET sometimes :)  But, if we have the mindset that motherhood is a calling and these children are a gift from God and if our mindset is that of death to our expectations for how our life is, then our reaction is free to be that of relaxation and calmness for the chaos of a situation...because why?  Because our expectation for how our lives SHOULD be doesn't matter!  Now, it's about using EVERY opportunity to train and raise these little gifts to love the Lord.