I love being a mother. I really do. Mothering a smiling and joyful (and willful …) baby is just so wonderful. Sometimes when I look back at my day, though, it seems as if all my effort accomplished nothing. True, the laundry has been washed, dishes done, diapers changed. But at the end of the day it is hard to tell because all of that “doing” is waiting to be done all over again. There are no marks of achievement when is comes to housework.

Emma is teething just now, and today she just wants to held as she sucks her thumb or trills to me as she plays with my hair. It is difficult to get much accomplished while carrying a nearly 20 pound baby, and combined with her want for more nursing and less “real” food, I am feeling a bit tired! So we have been sitting at the computer and I have been catching up on reading blogs as Ems absorbs comfort. As I was reading I found that this woman’s post from last week was good and very timely.

It reminded me of the story of how David’s mighty men went down to Bethlehem to get him some water from the well, and instead of drinking it he poured it out on the ground as a drink offering (II Sam 23:14-17). Of course, David had a purpose for pouring out the water – to him it represented the life blood of the men who had brought it for him – but I have always seen it from his men’s view as well: they so wanted him to have this water that meant so much to him, and then he poured it out instead of drinking it. All their effort gone. But their effort wasn’t gone. It was being used as an offering of praise.

The blog author was convicted about her setting “seen” accomplishments as idols in her heart. It was so good to read her transparency. I stopped to ponder: Can I go from needing a visible, tangible product of my labor to allowing it to be poured out before God?