Monday, March 14, 2011

Why Being a Mom isn't HARD!!!

I SO needed this insight today... and so I post it here on my blog that is painfully neglected because I am busy being a Mom to my four AMAZING, WONDERFUL, ENERGETIC babies!!!

“Being a mom is hard.” They’re just words; words that we’ve earned, right?

Except, our words will define what motherhood means to us. Repeat that phrase long enough, and any mom will begin to resent her work, look for an escape and lose sight of the love that motivated her to do it in the first place.

Whenever I’ve fallen prey to words of frustration too easily spoken, I lose my focus until words of love nurture me back. Many people, through many years spoke words that helped me see that I could succeed as a mom. I heard words of encouragement, not discouragement. I heard positive words of praise versus negative words of disappointment. And I heard the best words of all, “Mom, you’re the best. Mom, I love you. Mom, I need you.”

With such words—even when we speak them ourselves—we remember we’re not doing a job, we’re creating life. Recently, my husband reminded me that the word sacrifice actually means to make sacred. A little change of understanding gives new meaning to the sacrifice we make as a mom. We turn from labor to dedication. We turn from exhaustion to devotion. We turn from worthy of a vacation to worthy of respect. We turn from what we sacrifice to our children. We turn from the words “this is hard” to “this is holy”.

I admit that being a mom seems hard. But I also know it’s is a stage in our development; we’ll outgrow it. And, someday we’ll see that what we receive as a mom is more than we ever give.