I’ve lost many years’ wages being a stay at home mom. I’ve “wasted” years of education being a stay at home mom. But I only have this one window of opportunity to love my people well right now {while maintaining a semblance of my own sanity.} I’m learning that the teenage years require an availability and energy level that surpass the little years. I’m sorry if you don’t have teenagers yet and that sentence just ruined your day.
Like Mary, we have a brief window to overflow with the specific kind of devotion that each season requires. It probably doesn’t look like anointing someone with expensive perfume and suffering public humiliation in the process. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t costly. Service is costly. Forgoing your own desires in order to equip and love another person is always costly.
Maybe other people won’t get it. There will be days when even you don’t get it. Will you believe Jesus over public opinion and even over your own opinion? He says your right-now devotion is beautiful, that it’s a proclamation of the Gospel, that it’s a unique and sacred part of God’s purpose for you, for those you love, and for the world.
{And then will you turn around and repeat this truth back to me? Every day, I seem to forget all over again.}
Earlier this week I was hustling out of the grocery store with bags of food that have since been devoured. The strangest awareness washed over me right there in the parking lot.
I get to do this. I get to do all of this. I get to be a stay at home mom. And it’s bringing me joy — not all the time, but at least for today. Dear God, only you could work this sort of miracle within my stubborn heart. Thank you. And keep doing it.
One day I won’t be needed in this way but now is not that time.
I want to receive this fleeting season as a gift in the same way that I received the long ago baby season as a gift.
I want to look back on this one, merciful opportunity and call it beautiful.
***
This article originally appeared at MarianVischer.com, published with permission.
