On Love and Thankfulness for the Weary Mom

The everyday can be so suffocating.

Life, with its piles upon piles, threatens to smother the breath from your chest. When you stand in a kitchen covered with flour and dirty dishes and crying babies and the 'still to do' list can make your knees weak and your heart flutter. When the toddler whom you've poured all of that kindness, gentleness, patience, understanding, love, and self control into, strikes out at you, and the older ones strew messes and arguments throughout the house faster than you can keep up, do you stand there and feel sometimes, as your knees threaten to fail you, there's just not enough love for all this work. Do you think that maybe you're not loved enough, or perhaps you just don't have enough love to give to make this all worth it?
Do those thoughts ever come over you like a wave so overwhelming?

Lies.

There is always enough love.

You are loved, dear mother. And you are enough.

Zephaniah 3:17 The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing

And there is always love to be found if you look.

Peel away the layers of laundry and angry words spoken, dirty bathrooms and unrealistic expectations, dig through the I'm hungry's 20 minutes after a meal, and the feelings of inadequacy. And you, beautiful woman, will discover that love is abundant.

It's everywhere. His love is there in young rosy cheeks and glistening eyes. In a first soft snow and harvest moon. In a husband's smile and work worn hands. In the clutch of chubby fingers, and the smell of a newborn's head.  His love is there in the midst of teenage testing and loved ones lost. In the noise and chaos and mess. He loves you through it all and will give you enough love and grace to get through it.

You need just ask.

I encourage you weary mother, spend 20 minutes diligently seeking God. Ask, (beg, if you need) for grace and a pour out of love. You won't be disappointed.

And then...
Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever. Psalm 136:26



Elizabeth