Because we're worth it?

I've just read this article, which I was putting off because of the title.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/vanessa-olorenshaw/maternal-care-politics-of-mothering_b_6882018.html

(For a start, it's not just mothers who are stay-at-home parents.)

It's a point of view I agree with on the whole, and I find it frustrating that stay-at-home parents are quite so devalued by the government currently. I would also love it if my own tax-free earning allowance could be transferred to my husband! I've seen online quizzes that attempt to calculate just how much a SAHM's job is worth, per annum.

But it's reassuring as Christians to know that our value as mothers doesn't come from the government, or society, or status, or a wage.

Our value as mothers comes from God. Just as he values every human being, he values us. And the Bible has much to say about women who were given little value by those around them in the circumstances they found themselves.

Mary, the mother of Jesus: a poor girl from Nazareth, chosen to grow, give birth to and raise the Son of God. No doubt as her pregnant belly grew, the comments and stigma from those around her did too. But God has chosen to pour out his blessing and favour on her.

The women who found Jesus had risen from the dead; running to tell their (male) friends, they were disbelieved; pah, they're women! What do they know? But God had chosen to reveal the risen Jesus to them first.

The poor widow who put her lowly offering into the collection box and was sneered at; Jesus praised her sacrificial spirit.

The woman who smashed an exorbitantly expensive jar of perfume and poured it over Jesus' feet out of love for him. The men berated her for such waste; Jesus berated them!

The list is endless. And it's not just confined to women; God's speciality is blessing the weak, the poor, the helpless and the stigmatised (we would do well to learn from this ourselves more often). The shepherds, for example, were the first to know of Jesus' birth - men who were certainly low down on the pecking order in Israel.

But there's another angle to this. The women I've mentioned above have one thing in common. They all loved God above all else. They made their love for him known even when it meant they were insulted and looked down upon. Because they knew it was worth it; He was worth it.

On a day (which let's face it is most of them) where I'm feeling tired and downtrodden, scraping food off the floor, pulling violent siblings apart and wiping poo off bottoms, I know that God has put me here, and that the work I am doing is His work. I know that God sees, and he values, and he blesses. Even when no one else does. What I am doing is of eternal worth, and what I am learning is of eternal joy. The challenge for me is to love God more, to know him more and to enjoy him more so that any feelings of resentment are dispelled by the sweet knowledge that my true fulfillment comes not in worldly worth or end of the drudgery, but my Saviour and my sure hope of Heaven. I'm pretty rubbish at this right now, as my husband and children will testify; my sure hope of Heaven often fades into the background as I sinfully erupt at the latest cup of spilled water, clump of hair held spitefully in a sister's hand or paint spattered around every corner of the room...

So the next time I start to question how much I'm worth, I am going to try and remember that it's not because I'm worth it... it's because He's worth it.