Motherhood

Yesterday was a glorious fall day, full of sunshine and leaves of red and gold. It inspired me to take Hudson and Harper to the local pumpkin patch, where they enthusiastically picked out 4 pumpkins – 2 big ones and 2 little ones.

Being a mother is truly the most intense, exhausting, demanding, exhilarating task I’ve ever undertaken.

“Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth.”– Psalm 127:4Last night we tried something new at dinnertime. We set the table nicely and served dinner in the dining room, with our four kiddos seated in booster seats (except for Hudson).

The other day Hudson told me that the bread he was eating made him feel “warm and soft like a teddy bear.” And hearing such a cute statement from a sticky-faced five-year-old made me feel warm and soft like a teddy bear!

“She watches over the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness.”– Proverbs 31:27When you spend countless hours conversing with preschoolers and toddlers, it’s easy to feel a little brain-dead by the end of the day.

The other night I was battling an intense headache. My kids are not used to seeing Mommy in pain and unable to interact with them in my normal energetic way. The toddlers kept looking at me with concerned faces and asking, “What’s wrong, Mommy?

“But I want to!” is a phrase heard often in the Ludy home. Recently we informed Dubber (age 3) that he was not allowed to decorate the living room walls with a pen, and broke the news to Avy (age 2) that she was not allowed to dump an entire – large!

Have you ever heard that old saying, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!”? I used to laugh at this quirky phrase, but now that I’m a mother, I’ve found that it has a lot of truth to it!

Jim Elliot wrote, “Wherever you are, be all there.” Never have I been more challenged in applying this principle than with my four young children. It’s so easy to be with my children physically, yet disengaged from them mentally and emotionally.