My friend looked at me with a blank stare when I asked how I could be praying for her upcoming move. “I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter,” she said with zero enthusiasm. “My days are all the same. Day in and day out, I do the same things. If I clean the house, it just gets messy again. What’s the point?”
My friend is the mother of a toddler. I know the feeling. They say cleaning your house with young children is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos. The moment I finish cleaning the living room, I hear a crash in the bedroom that tells me a stack of puzzles has just been emptied on the floor. In the midst of all the mundane tasks — emptying the dishwasher, tackling the laundry piles, filling the cereal bowls — it’s easy to lose sight of God’s greater purpose.
Without a vision of who God is, and what he’s called us to as wives and mothers, we forget the reason behind our tasks. I felt compassion for my friend, whose joy and purpose was lost amid the daily duty of diapers and housework. I identified with her all too easily.
How do we capture a vision for motherhood that inspires and encourages women in the various seasons of raising a family? How do we develop a passion for what God has called us to do — one that lifts our eyes from the mess of dishes in the sink to the eternal purpose he intends us to enjoy?
You’re Displaying Something
Scripture reveals that our influence as wives and mothers is needed in the home. Proverbs 31 tells of the excellent wife who works from sunup to sundown to benefit her family, home, and community. She provides food, buys land, plants a garden, makes and sells clothing, just to name a few things.
Although her endeavors include earning income outside her home, her main priority is her household: “She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness” (Prov. 31:27). As a strong and godly helper, she does her husband good, not harm, all her days (Prov. 31:11–12). She’s clothed with strength and dignity. She looks to the future with joy and laughter (Prov. 31:25). Kindness and wisdom mark her words (Prov. 31:26).