Priceless

{{I am so blessed to hear that my self-sermons may have impacted you as well.  Humbly thanking you for your kind words and loving hearts!}}

I've been pregnant, or breastfeeding, or both, for 8 years.

For every day of my marriage, I've been pregnant or breastfeeding, or both.  Sometimes my husband and I joke that he wouldn't recognize me without the telltale dark circles under my eyes, the crick in my neck each morning due to cradling a little head in my sleep.

From time to time, the scientific community will come out and announce, apparently astonished, that research shows these natural mothering instincts are actually good, beneficial.  And us Mamas, we roll our eyes, thinking we didn't need them to tell us that.  Because we already know it.

I knew it that first time a  baby was laid on my chest.  After hours of pain, moaning, rocking and shrieking, there he was.  I peered into the soft whorl of a tiny ear - miraculous.  Lids blink open for the first time and it takes my breath away - there is more here than what meets the eye.

I see it when I cup a little chin and look deep into those endless eyes that seem to see straight through me.

This isn't mere science, cannot be boiled down purely to numbers and statistics.  There is something holy going on here - something predestined, pure and lovely.


This world doesn't know what to do with these choices, how to count them, quantify them.  They see the 12 diaper changes a day, the toddler tantrums on grocery trips, the potty training failures and the sleepless night and pronounce them all to be worthless.  After all, we see no earthly paycheck. Why would anyone subject themselves to such servitude, such slavery?

And even we may lose sight of the true reward of it all when we hear that retching in the night, signaling a mess needing to be cleaned up now, sleep or no sleep, or when a colicky baby screams for hours despite our best efforts.

Because it is truly priceless, we sometimes can see it as worthless.  But those terms are not the same, now, are they?

In His Word, God frequently equates his relationship to us as a mother to her child.  And yet we still have such a hard time realizing that this work we do, these relationships we have - they are truly from Him and by His perfect design.

This floor, this one with remnants of last night's dinner still lurking beneath the table, this is holy ground.  These tired boards these tired bones walk, babe in arms, shushing and singing and praying - they echo with our footsteps and our prayers lived out, sacrificial and sacred.

I've been wrung out and run over, time and again.  I've never experienced physical, emotional, and mental strain the way I have since I first became "mama."  I have never worked this hard in my life. But I know the secret.  I know it is priceless, this work-love of ours.  Imperfect and blemished, cracked and broken, still - worth more than rubies.


Isaiah 66:13
As a mother comforts her child,
   so will I comfort you;