To The Working Mom: You Are Every Mom

You want to know what’s great about June, darling? Well, there are lots of things. But one of the great things about June is how Jubilant it is. That’s why we’re celebrating Jubilant June, by offering a giveaway every day for the next week. (Because nothing says jubilant like a giveaway, amiright?!) We have a wide variety of things to giveaway items – from books to pacifier holders to Smuckers Fruit-Fulls! Come back daily and celebrate June with us!

Dear Working Mama,

You, with your hands in the soapy water barely able to keep your eyes open because you’re pulling a night shift scrubbing floors for minimum wage.

You, foraging in the dumps of Guatemala trying to find anything for your eight children to eat.

You, standing in your nurse’s uniform giving meds to a man who’s complaining about women working outside of the home, you–fighting to keep your family out of debt because your husband lost his job and your baby is sick and the hospital bills are forcing you to take out another line of credit, YOU.

You are every woman, dear mama, because work doesn’t always constitute a paycheck. Sometimes your work looks a lot like a stay at home mother but it all matters.

This caring for people, it matters–whether it’s bent low over your child’s fever in the middle of a night, or bent low over an ornery man in a hospital bed checking his pulse–whether it’s baking bread from scratch or picking up day-old loaves from the bakery on your way home from a graveyard shift at the factory.

We waste so much time looking down on one another and not enough time lifting each other up.

We are not the ones to judge. We are the ones to love. To look in the eyes of a weary mom and say, Your work is important–whether or not it comes with a paycheck–because you are serving Jesus with every ounce of your being in the way you know how.

Whether at home or at work, you carry family in folds of your heart–you rise early to make them sandwiches, you bundle them up for school, you feed them Tylenol and cold washcloths all night long, then rise for an early morning shift, you somehow make it to your son’s soccer game in spite of getting yelled at by your boss because there are some things that matter more.

“I just don’t know what to do,” my friend with four babies laments to me. “Some of the nurses think I shouldn’t work, even on weekends when my husband’s home; others think you’re nothing if you don’t work outside of the home–what should I do? I feel so torn, all the time.”

Let’s stop calling the shots for one another. God’s job is to do the convicting. Our job is to do the loving.

Let’s start looking beyond the details and start seeing the person. The dear woman with the calloused hands and the bags under her eyes, the one who cries herself to sleep because she’s a single mother who doesn’t know how she’s going to make parent-teacher interviews tomorrow, the one who is so depressed she works just to afford anti-depressants, the one who was born to be a nurse and squeezes it in to keep her license.

Ours is not to judge. Ours is to love. To nurture and care for one another, to breathe life into dark places, to bring hope to the world–THIS is the greatest work a woman can do, and it’s costly yes–it will cost you time and energy and sleep when others don’t understand, but the rewards are greater.

For if we live in love–whether we work outside the home or within it, whether we’re a SAHM or a professor, whether we are single or married or rich or poor–this is what matters. This love is our calling.

And it wraps the world tight in a beautiful embrace.

All my heart, sisters,

Emily.

Emily T. Wierenga is an award-winning journalist, blogger, commissioned artist and columnist, as well as the author of five books including the memoir Atlas Girl: Finding Home in the Last Place I Thought to Look (Baker Books). She lives in Alberta, Canada with her husband and two sons. For more info, please visit emilywierenga.com. Find her on Twitter or Facebook.

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