When I was a new stay at home mom, and my first son was only about a year old, I remember feeling overwhelmed just by the everyday things I needed to do. House cleaning, shopping, making meals, taking care of a very rambunctious baby boy, taking care of my husband, and actually trying to have a moment to myself each day. I was frustrated because I worked from early morning until after everyone would be in bed and still I didn’t ever feel caught up. I told my husband that I just wanted to have a ‘pile of beans’ to show what I had done by the end of the day. My feelings of being worth less were overwhelming.
One day I determined I was going to get myself together, the house in order, a nice meal cooked for my husband, and even a homemade dessert. I prepared for it to take me all day to accomplish. I began in the morning with trying to clean my house, but it seemed that whatever I cleaned, the baby and the dog un-cleaned. Muddy dog feet, 
children’s toys, and tossed food on the floor, undid all my cleaning. So I re-cleaned, and re-cleaned, and re-cleaned. By the time I was ready to cook dinner, the house was in order, I had a clean baby, and one quarantined dog.
I had decided on a dinner that my husband loved, but that had a complicated sauce requiring constant stirring. Mistake number one. While I was occupied with stirring this sauce, my toddler son found a water bottle, managed to get the lid off and dump all the water on the floor. Being a toddler he naturally thought this was wonderful and began playing in it and became soaked. Then he slipped and fell in the water and began to cry. I quickly left the sauce to make sure he was ok, discovered he was fine and took this very wet toddler in my arms to finish stirring the sauce. When I realized how wet he was I undressed him with one hand while stirring the sauce with the other hand. It was awkward to say the least. I was now wet, he was dying to play in the water some more, and I was still trying to stir my sauce. Time was running out and my husband was coming home any minute. Trying to focus my attention on my sauce, I realized that when I had stopped stirring to check on my son it had boiled too hard. I was frustrated and trying to fix it when once again my son slipped in the water. My sauce was smoking, my nearly naked baby and I were soaked and crying, my floor had water everywhere, wet clothes were strewn across the room, and at that moment my husband walked through the door letting the dog in with muddy feet. Mud and water mixed, smearing my floor and ruining my carpet. Needless to say, I felt like a failure. I had worked all day and still nothing was how I wanted it to be.
In those first years I learned a very important lesson. My success, and therefore my sense of worth in a job well done, was not going to be in keeping a perfect house or having a fairy tale, TV-esc running household. My success was going to have to focus on the big picture. Are my children taken care of, loved, and feel good about themselves today? Have I invested my self in them? Does my husband know that I love him and that I put him in high priority? Is my relationship with the Lord placed first and foremost and have I relied on him for my strength today instead of relying on myself? These things are the foundation of a good running family. Dishes come and go (actually I think they spontaneously multiply in the sink) laundry is forever, dinner will happen. But if I have spent more time on the details than the people, then I have failed. I once had a friend who complained that she couldn’t spend time playing with her infant daughter, yet she couldn’t conceive of letting even one dish sit in the sink for an hour after lunch in order to play. I have one chance to invest something eternal in my kids and their family life experience. What they get out of it will stay with them forever, and it will be passed on to the next generation. What do I want my kids to remember about their family when they are all grown up? That mom worked so hard to clean the house or run her business that she never had time to play a game? I certainly hope not.
This principle is even more important to those of us who are trying to run a business from our homes. We must be even more organized, focused, and assured of where our worth comes from. Otherwise we run the risk of prioritizing the wrong things. My ‘pile of beans’ comes from seeing my children thrive with my attention. My business and my house come second. They must learn to coexist. If I measure my self worth by the hundred things I can’t get done today I will never learn the true value of my contribution to the family. But if I learn to value the things that are eternal, well, that can be one pretty impressive pile of beans at the end of the day.
Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com
Kari Day is a Christian stay at home mom of three great kids. She runs an in-home daycare as well as an online business. She has a passion for helping moms be free. Free to stay at home with their family. Free to earn a potentially great income. Free to choose what to do with their time, rather than be bound to a 9-5 job. She has done it. She has been able to put her school age children in Christian private school and stay home with the little ones all while running her businesses from home. To learn more about Kari’s on-line business visit her at. Htttp://www.moms1kadaybiz.com or visit her new personal blog at psalm118–5.blogspot.com/
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