I don’t often write about stay at home moms. I suppose there are a lot of reasons why.

1. I am not one.

2. There are already a ton of people writing about that well.

3. When people google motherhood devotional, there are pages and pages of things that pop-up. When people google working-mother devotional, I am the first hit. Not because I am super important, just because there is a lot of silence on the issue.

But lately, those reasons have sounded more like excuses. I think sometimes in my defense of the christian working mother, I leave in the dust those who are called to stay at home. My adamant shouting of “We are called outside the home too!” leaves out my sisters and brothers who aren’t. Those who have been called to stay at home, who the Lord has called to the carpooling and the room-moming and the diaper changing and the fit defusing. I want to make sure that you know this: Yours is a holy work. It is hard in the trenches of toddler tantrums and baby feeding. It is hectic in the call to home school, or carpool.

This parenting thing is not for the faint at heart and I know sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, but You are called to this. You are called to this. If God has you here, then you are called to it. May the Lord remind you of just how good you are at all of this today. There is a lot to do. You are doing it, and you are doing it well.

Please, do not underestimate the blessing that you are to your children, your spouse, your friends. I would not have made it through my first year of motherhood if not for the kindness, the wisdom, the dinner from my friends called to minister from their homes. I would not have been able to make it through this week, except I have some very generous stay at home friends who return my phone calls with “your girls are always welcome here.”

Yours is not a lesser calling. Staying at home is not something that God calls women and men who are less capable of anything else to do. Who knows the reasons for the seasons in our lives (though I think toddlers and teenagers are both seasons to humble us). And yours is not a greater calling. Mothering is holy work for sure, but putting it on the pedestal of holiest and highest has only served in making me unsure and insecure, defensive and defeated. How in the world are you supposed to admit you failed miserably at your own highest calling?

We are equally called you and I. Your work is holy too. There is plenty of room at God’s banquet table, and I am sorry it has taken me this long to pull out your chair.