Yes, but what ELSE do you do?

Mommy monotony, anyone? Actually, I'm feeling pretty awesome about being a mom these days. However, the dishes, the laundry, the picking up toys, the crazed errand-running with tots-in-tow, the rejected healthy dinners, the--did I mention dishes? Yes, these tasks seem anything but holy.

Guess what, though-- they ARE holy! I am doing the Lord's errand by taking swell care of his small ones. My service is unselfish and significant. Everything involved in the work of a mother-- yes even the dishes-- is holy because it is what HE wants me to do. A cool person called Kristine Manwaring said it better: (excerpt taken from good post here)

“The work of feeding, clothing, and nurturing one another is every bit as spiritual as it is physical. [Some wise mother] feels strongly that when ordinary, life-sustaining tasks are done together as a family, they bind family members to one another in small but critical ways. I was startled to realize that she saw as “sacred” the tasks that I always thought were obstacles to sacredness.

And for evidence, she turned to the scriptures. The parable of the sheep and the goats found in Matthew 25 clearly shows that Christ will judge us according to our willingness to feed and clothe “the least of these my brethren” (verse 40). Does this include members of our own families?

In fact, Christ used imagery of feeding and washing and cleaning throughout His parables and object lessons. “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd” (Isa. 40:11). He will wash “away the filth of the daughters of Zion” (2 Ne. 14:4) and “sweep away the bad out of [His] vineyard” (Jacob 5:66). He even likens Himself to a hen who “gathereth her chickens under her wings” (Matt. 23:37).

Even more striking to me, Christ not only spoke of these things, He personally did them. He fed multitudes with limited tangible resources in a miraculous example of His attention to our physical as well as spiritual hunger. He washed the feet of His disciples to illustrate the humble service required of a Master and to reveal what He was willing to do that we might be entirely clean. In the book of Moses, He states that He, Himself, made the coats of skins to clothe Adam and Eve.

When seen in this new light, my perception of tasks like peeling potatoes and scrubbing floors began to turn upside down and inside out. It was becoming obvious to me that when we care for the physical as well as the spiritual needs of our families, we are patterning our lives after the Savior.”

I mean, I'm gonna do and re-do (to the infiniti-eth power) all those household tasks anyway, but isn't it something else to know that it actually MATTERS!? God values that my children are well-fed and half-dressed, and that my home is occasionally-clean and always-being-cleaned. So I'm going to wager a guess that He values yours, as well. (sigh of relief.)

Being a mom is the coolest, I say!