Sitting around the table with a
group of people talking about life and everything that makes up who you are,
then the question is asked of you, “What do you do for a living.” You smile
quietly, wondering what everyone is going to think of your job and you respond,
“Oh, I’m just a mom.”

Just a mom.

Nothing gets me more than that
statement. I’ve even said it before. After hearing myself say it I sometimes
even find myself shuttering at my choice of words. “Just?” Is that really what I think of being a mom? I am just a mom?

Being a mom is a lot. It takes a
lot of hard work, a lot of patience, a lot of determination, a lot of prayer,
and a whole lot of other stuff. There is no just
to being a mom.

It is so easy for those of us who
are just mother’s to get down on
ourselves because that is all we are responsible for, raising our kids. On days
that we get the kids into bed and realize the house is a mess, the kids watched
way too much TV, our teeth weren’t even brushed today, and let’s not even begin
on what the household ate for dinner, it’s those days that are so easy to look
at ourselves and say, “I am just a
mom! How could I get everything wrong today when that is all I have to take
care of?” When we see the mother juggling work on top of her motherly duties
doing much better than we are we easily sink back into our chairs and think we
can’t handle this whole mom thing. When we see the mom down the street waking
up before the kids and having the perfectly balanced meal prepared three times
a day managing to keep their house clean through it all, we can easily feel
like we will never measure up.

But let me tell you something,
there is no just to you being a mom.
You are a mom, that’s what you are. Whether you are a working mom, a part time
working mom, a work from home mom, or a stay at home mom, you have one of the
hardest and most important jobs in this world. You are a mom. You are raising
children. It doesn’t matter if you are raising one child or ten children, being
a mom is a big job. It is a difficult job. Oh, but it is one of the most
important things you will ever do.

You are raising a child. That child
was specifically gifted to you because God knew you could handle it. You could
handle the tantrums, the picky eating, the eagerness, the curiosity, the
destruction, the emotional roller coasters – you can handle it. Even if all you
did today was keep a child from harming themselves or constantly coral siblings
from arguing with each other, you made a difference. Even if all you did today
was make your presence known in the lives of those children in your care, you
did exactly what you were supposed to. Being a mom is hard. Some days you feel
on top of the world in this mom thing, others you feel like someone could have
done it better. But never look at yourself as just a mom. You are a mom. That is an important job.