Changing the World (One Diaper at a Time)

My sweet friend Stacia recently shared her heart about how she's been feeling she doesn't contribute anything to the world, she "just" stays at home and raises her 3 children.  Oh, did this ever make my brain start whirring!

Of course, Stacia realizes how important her work is.  She knows what a difference she makes.  But it's so easy to listen to our culture and think, "If I have nothing to show at the end of the day, no bottom line, no profit, no product, then I haven't accomplished anything of value."  

So many of us with tiny ones are suffering from lack of face-to-face time with other adults as well, especially when somebody (or everybody) has the flu, the weather is bad, or we are intensively potty-training and can't leave the house for a while.  Our hubbies come home from work all "talked out" and wanting to crash.  We may feel isolated, and we wonder if just maybe we would feel better "out in the world" instead of "stuck at home."

Now, this doesn't apply to everyone, but I'm a very young mother.  Most of my "old girlfriends" from childhood and college are nowhere near having children.  They are in the middle of exciting, productive, "making a difference" careers in education, nursing, and missions.  I hear about their exciting work, their unique experiences, their exciting vacations (and, in many cases, their rather lucrative salaries), and feel a little, well, stuck.  Who doesn't, every once in a while?

But then I see those two cute (and messy) faces staring up at me, and it's all worth it.  

"Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is place in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into it's soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no others hands the sacred and holy trust given to her." -JR Miller