The Most Important Work

“Children are not a distraction from more important work, they are the most important work.” – C.S. Lewis

This quote has been speaking to me for months. We have a screen saver on our TV, and this quote scrolls by periodically, gently whispering to me. Most of the time it feels encouraging, but one day a few weeks ago, it didn’t. I was feeling very frustrated as a mother. I felt like all the time and energy that I have put into “mothering” – the cooking, the cleaning, the diaper changing, the laundry…oh the laundry, the discipline, the reading of books (the list goes on and on) – wasn’t worth a single penny. I was frustrated that my kids don’t listen the first time every single time. I was frustrated that they still need me all the time for everything. I was frustrated that my kids had stopped me from getting everything done that day that I wanted to get done, all the things that I am supposed to get done as THEIR mother. Didn’t they understand I was just trying to do all these things for them?

And then God spoke, “Sometimes parenting doesn’t feel efficient, but it is productive.” 

That one sentence stopped me dead in my tracks. I decided to look up the definitions of a couple of those words:

Efficient: achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense. Productive: producing or able to produce large amounts of goods, crops, or other commodities

Efficiency was exactly what I had been looking for – MAXIMUM productivity, with MINIMUM wasted effort. And I was feeling like all my effort had been wasted. 

I was broken. My kids will be fine without a chef, a nanny, a maid. What God made me to be is their MOTHER. They aren’t bothered by the toys on the floor, chicken nuggets for every meal (they would actually prefer this to most of my cooking), or the fact that they are on their last pair of underwear. They need my heart. They need me to be able to see the moments where God is working, where I can speak truth and life into them. They want me to be with them, to love them, to choose them. Children are the very reason for motherhood. Yes, they bring about many tasks, many to-do items, and many days, I end the day feeling like I am not efficient enough. I didn’t get enough done. But, did I take moments to sow into my children? Did I use the moments I was given to speak something into their hearts that will bring about fruit in their lives? Because that is the definition of productive: to produce a good crop of fruit.

Maybe I won’t see them choose respect today. Maybe it will be years before that seed sprouts into something I see as a seed that I planted. But planting that seed is a thousand times more valuable than getting an extra load of laundry folded and put away.

Be encouraged mammas. Offer your heart to your children. Let’s not see them as a distraction to the tasks and to-do lists that they bring with them. Let’s see loving and raising our children as the most important work that we do.

We would like to thank Brooke Kellum for writing this post!