First, this very post is being featured today over at Sarah’s blog. I hope it encourages you – you aren’t alone in all those mundane things. You’re in this season for such a time as this.
Second, did you know today is the first day in my WEEK of GIVEAWAYS?! Yes, that’s right. Make sure you check out the beautiful jewelry that could be yours. Just enter the giveaway {easy peasy} and then check back every day this week for giveaways from The Pleated Poppy, DaySpring, and more!
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I want to be where you are.
I’m not so concerned about a big house and a nice car, as I am about having a loving husband that will stick around for a lifetime. I want to adopt and I want to visit India so I can meet my Compassion child {sister} – I have big dreams.
I want the kids and the house and the husband. I dream of having rooms to decorate instead of a Pinterest board full of ideas and wishes, and I’m already excited to shop for cute children’s clothes.
I’ll take the messes and the late nights. I’ll take the dirty diapers and the “but I don’t want green beans!!!!!” dinners. Never-ending laundry? Okay. Unmade beds? Doesn’t phase me.
I want to be where you are.
And some days, I bet you would rather be me. Just for an hour or two, I bet you’d love to jump in that van of yours – filled with old wrappers and toys and clothes strewn everywhere – and hightail it to my world.
A place with never-ending homework, projects in every class every singleweek and bible studies and meetings each night. Terrible meals in the caf where everyone settles for a bowl of cereal before heading to the library, and learning to be independent from the only life you’ve ever known.
To you, it probably sounds like a vacation. Write a paper? Compared to carpooling everyone here, there, and everywhere, that probably sounds glorious. Eating a bowl of cereal by yourself, without anyone asking you beforehand what’s for dinner? That would be a miracle.
For an hour or two, we would love to trade lives.
You could go back to being single and relatively carefree, and I could make crafts and play games in between my new 100 responsibilities.
But we’re each in our own season of life for a reason.
(original source // here)
I’m a college student, single with no boys on the horizon, because God is still working to prepare me. He’s placed me at my school for a reason, and He’s given me friends to impact, while loving them much and loving them well. The late nights spent cramming for exams are stressful, but He’s using them to teach me life-long lessons. My (in)ternship with (in)courage is a real world job that has given me more opportunities than I could imagine, and has allowed me to encourage others while I’m being poured into myself.
You’re a young mom, married and stressed out and busy and where are the car keys? The house is a mess even though you pick up what you can each night. Making sure everyone {yourself included} eats something other than chicken nuggets each night is your goal, and thank the Lord for Baby Einstein, right? Those moments of playing house or racing little cars or making trains go around a track 300 times have purpose. You are loving your children in the place they are now, and you are building a bond that that little person will remember when they’re old enough to say so.
Or maybe you’re a mom with teenagers and they all grew up into people who no longer even want to talk to you. You’re no longer “cool,” and whatever you do, drop them off at their various activities but don’t stay and embarrass them. It feels like every day they’ve grown another inch – maybe if you could just stop blinking, the days wouldn’t speed by so quickly because how is it almost time for graduation? Those days when they sling words because they’re trying to figure out who they are apart from you, and you show their searching hearts grace – you are making an impact. They know the time left at home is growing shorter and then they’ll have to be on their own – and it’s scary and daunting and absolutely thrilling. As you support them and show interest in their interests, you encourage the person they’ve grown into.
Maybe your children have all grown up and started families of their own. You don’t see the ones you love most near as often as you’d like, and phone calls are a treasured thing. The house is too quiet and wasn’t it just yesterday you heard feet running down the stairs? Know this: you have trained them up and taught them to be adults. You survived the crazy, and now you get to watch – and encourage – your people as they walk through the crazy. Your empty house isn’t so quiet as you invite college girls over for dinner. They thank you a million times over for a simple homecooked meal, and secretly they consider you a second mama while they’re so far away from the one who raised them. You are loving another generation, and have been faithful with your own little ones.
Or you’re single {I’m right there with ya, sister}, and you avoid Pinterest wedding boards like the plague and how is it that every. single. one. of your friends is now engaged or married? Those Friday nights you get together with a group of girlfriends instead of going out with the wrong type of guy, you’re choosing to build lasting relationships that will carry you through the hard days. Whether you’re waiting by choice on God’s best or praying for the right man to hurry up and get this show on the road, you’re committed to trusting God. You know in His Timing He will provide, even while hoping ‘Someday’ will come. You are paving the way for the girls that will follow, and you are giving them hope that they don’t have to wait until they’re married to do great things.
Where you are – right now – has purpose. You are in your season of life for such a time as this. Like Esther, God has placed you smack dab in the middle of His Plan – there is significant meaning in your mundane.
If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this? Esther 4:14
Whether you’re walking beside me on this road or you’re five steps {or years} ahead, we’re in it together and we don’t need to wish to be anywhere else. I don’t need to be you – He has created me to be me. And you, right where you are, have been given a circle of people to impact while you’re walking this stretch of road.
The days may be long but the season is short. We’ll blink and it’ll be over, and suddenly we’ll find ourselves wishing to be back in this season we’re wishing to be out of.
Hey young mama? empty nester? single friend? I’m with you on this road. We might be in different seasons, but this is what He has given us for the time being. Let’s be faithful in it, together.
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