Sweet Peas & Buddies Round Up: It's so hard

This week, I would like to point you to a couple of articles that helped me to remember it's not about ME.

• In Motherhood Is A Calling (and Where Your Children Rank), Rachel Jankovic talks about the job as a mothering and how it isn't about you (or rather, me).  

Sometimes I get completely overwhelmed by the whole experience of mothering.
Can I be honest?  There are times when I don't like it.  It's not that it's hard.  Or that it's not fun.  It's so much more than that.
It's overwhelming.  It's exhausting.  It's never relenting.  It's constantly processing, changing, developing.

I never seem to really  know my children. Never.  I may think I do, but I don't.

What I do know is that my children are important.  They are influential members of the world and my life.  They are cherished beings of God.  That's why this is so hard.  Because I'm helping to shape these people who are already contributing to the world. Even when I don't cherish them like God does.They are impacting life all around them.

And they are important.
Now.
Not when they are grown up.  Not when they make some big financial discovery.

Right now.

And in being so, it is my job to  carry all my mother burdens to the cross and leave them.   Because it isn't about my desires and goals in life.  It's about them.  My job is affecting the world currently because my job is them. All four of them.

• In What to Do If You Wake Up Feeling Fragile, Dr. John Piper gently guides you into the word to find hope there.

There are going to be so many days like this.  I don't know about you, but I don't necessarily wake up feeling fragile.  The fragility slowly descends upon me until I am unsure of who I am and what I am feeling.  Then, for days after I try to figure out what is wrong.  And all that is really wrong is that I'm a fragile human being. I don't do things well sometimes. I can't defend myself from attacks sometimes.  My world does feel like it's going to fall apart sometimes.  And that's it.  

But there is so much more awaiting us!  

• In Put Jesus First, Grace (of Grace for the Road)--honestly I don't know her real name, so I'm calling her Grace--talks about what that "simple" three word phrase really means.

We are told we have to deny ourselves.  We are told that we have to give up our own desires.  We are told to read the Bible and pray.  And we think we should have it all figured out.  Except have you actually lived denying yourself?  We say we do as mothers, but really?  Are you sure about that?  How often to you hide the ice cream from the kids so you can have it and they don't know about it?  Me, every day!

I hope you enjoy the Sweet Peas & Buddies Round-up this week.