Between all the diaper changes, late night rockings to sleep, kissing boo boos, and everything else we do to make our babies feel better, there’s not much our children can do in their lifetimes to pay us back for all the sacrifices we make for them.
The hand drawn pictures are wonderful, but they don’t make up for the hours we spend laboring during childbirth.
I love baby kisses, but sometimes they don’t quite soothe the sting of a public tantrum, or a literal slap in the face.
It’s what people call “a thankless job.”
But that’s it, isn’t it? Motherhood is selfless. That’s exactly what makes it such holy work. We do it because it’s wonderful, and necessary – but it’s not easy.
It’s a type of spiritual work, one that involves serving the least of these, and feeding those who cannot feed themselves. It’s tending His sheep and watching His flock.
These tiny, helpless humans require so much of us. So much, in fact, that sometimes we must lose our self to benefit theirs.
I think back to the cross, and the excruciating decision Jesus made to die on the cross for his children.
He wasn’t making the easy decision, but the necessary one.
He wasn’t thinking of himself, but rather his children.
There’s no way we can repay him for that service. It was his most holy work because it wasn’t contingent on thanks or recognition.
It wasn’t an act done out of conceit, or out of a desire to be envied.
It was the purest act of love, a selfless act of love: the kind I pray for my children, and myself.
It should be an encouragement to all of us that we have already received this kind of love, and that we have it as our guideline of the best way to love our children.
There is no way for our children to “repay” us, in the same way that there is no sense in trying to repay the Lord for His love in any other way than loving them both to our fullest extent.
lifestyleofananxiousmom.com 