not in the limelight . . .
/Sometimes when I am nursing Bethany at 1:00 AM, at 3:00 AM,
(and so on...)
I think to myself,
"If only people knew how much of myself I give as a mommy."
I really don't need or even want the recognition.
I think it's just a human, fleshly response to desire acknowledgement for
enduring whatever journey or job God has laid before us.
But I don't want to live in that human reaction
to doing what God has put before me to do.
I want to just do it, easy or hard.
and for HIS recognition to be all I need.
and to take pleasure in just doing it.
Don't get me wrong,
i take such JOY in making the daily and nightly
sacrifices I have to make
in my job as a mother.
But the minute I start needing recognition for the job placed before me,
is when I need HIM the most.
HIS love, HIS approval...
things man cannot give.
one of my favorite pieces of poetry was given to me
when I worked as a camp counselor years ago.
I don't remember the whole thing, but the part I remember is the important part.
"You know Lord, how I serve you
with great emotional ferver
in the limelight...
But how would I react, I wonder,
if You pointed to a basin of water
And asked me to wash the callused feet
of a beat and wrinkled old woman.
Day after day,
Month after Month,
In a room where nobody saw
And nobody knew.
whew.
those words have always stuck with me.
how WOULD I react, how DO I react,
when God asks me to do something that noone sees or knows about,
that no other human can acknowledge my work in.
does my pride take over and desire that recognition?
yep, it does... A lot of the time.
I want to tell people of my accomplishment,
of my hard work, of my sacrifice.
And sometimes there is a time and place to do that.
But usually with the hard stuff, it IS in a room
"where nobody sees".
Giving my pride up to the Lord, day by day (and night by night...)
to do what is set before me to do.
for HIS glory, not for my own.
