I’ll be the first to admit it. I fight daily with the little devil on my shoulder. That being tells me lies.
I feel it so vividly – the tensions of being a stay at home mom, a lack of validation in the culture at large for motherhood or stay at home parents, and the voice inside me telling me almost every day “It’s not enough! Do more, be significant, something special.” A lot of my poetry recently has come out of that place.
God has reminded me, for some reason, of the truth that we never know whose mother we are — in that we don’t know who our children will become. If we knew that our sons or daughters, nieces or nephews, would grow up to be the next Barack Obama, or Madeleine L’Engle, Joan Chittister, or Scot McKnight, or Michelangelo, whomever, would we look at parenting, at mothering, differently?
They all had mothers.
Fathers. Aunties and Uncles.
Your role in the life of a child is a role that only you can fulfill even though most days you likely consider it insignificant.
This post was inspired in some part by reading this.
Logic & Imagination 
Don’t you consider the role of parent to be a calling? Not everyone considers it so, thus the value of children is skewed in society (and consequently parenting is considered a second-class citizenship). I applaud your simplicity in stating such a complex and important issue.
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I struggle with it bringing ultimate meaning and personal significance the way a paying job does. Our culture devalues the “job” and so do I sadly. This is more about me and where I find my value and significance.
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Perhaps ultimate meaning and significance cannot be contained within one aspect of our lives. (I know that’s an oversimplification) Often throughout my life, I have been reminded that a vocation and occupation are different, and sometimes, they are distinctly separate.
I made the mistake many years ago to assume what was considered a calling to also be the type of career I would have. I have yet to receive that kind of affirmation or opportunity in my life.
While my situation doesn’t come with the biological imperative that being a father or mother does, it’s a parallel concept. We, while looking at ourselves through God’s eyes, must accept that what we’re called to may have little or nothing to do with what we use to pay our bills.
A question that comes to mind is both easy and impossible to answer. When you introduce yourself to someone, who do you say you are?
The answers to that, well, speak volumes.
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