**This post is part of the Cultivate Your Home membership community. To read the full post, please join our monthly membership for access to this and other content to support you in your motherhood, homeschool, and handmade life**
The world will tell us that serving our family is not a good thing – you deserve your me-time; you deserve to be pampered; you don’t need to spend your life doing things for other people.
And while I do believe that you need to have time to fill your own cup, I also believe that when we have the right attitude about serving our family, it changes everything about our day.
Instead of thinking about what we have to do, let’s think about what we get to do.
The family and home we are entrusted with – these are a gift. Serving our families, through cooking meals, cleaning our homes, homeschooling our kids, caring for our babies… it’s a joy. It doesn’t mean that it’s easy work, but when we shift our mindset from it being a burden to a joy, it suddenly feels not quite as burdensome.
I’m not perfect at this. There are days I get sick of picking up the tenth pair of dirty socks off the floor or asking my boys to come back to the table and clean up their lunch mess. But even on the days that I get frustrated with doing the same thing over and over, I know that these days won’t last forever. And I remember the days that I longed and prayed to be as stay at home mom.
When I shift my mindset to the gift of motherhood, rather than the burden, it opens up my heart to see how much my service to my family blesses them.
It blesses my kids to have full, nourished bellies.
It blesses my husband to have a meal when he’s done with work.
It blesses my kids to have the freedom of home education.
It blesses my husband to not have to search for clean clothes.
It blesses my family to have food growing in the garden and preserved on the pantry shelves.
It blesses my family to not have a grouchy, resentful mom who is annoyed at picking up socks for the tenth time.
Serving our families is not a lesser job than working for pay outside of the home. The world might not recognize it that way, but the Father sees you in the everyday moments. And you bless Him when you love your family well!
We can choose to be joyful when we serve our families – even on the hard days. We get to do this, mamas!