Continual

A week or so ago, God nudged me. He reminded me that this whole blog idea began as a way to minister as a Titus 2 woman to younger women. However, mostly, I use it to put my thoughts to "pen and paper." But I wonder if it's to be more than that. I know my highest calling is to abide in Him, my Maker, my God. And I will continue to do that but my focus of blogging may change. I will aim to teach what is good, how to love a husband (when I am so selfish), how to love my children (even when they are difficult), how to be pure (in a corrupt world), how to work at home, and show what it means to be subject to your husband.
Being a married woman and a mom is a call of self-sacrifice. As I meet moms, I see different points of view, different choices, different callings even. And though it's difficult at times, it reaffirms our family's choices: for me to be a worker only at home. One works incredibly hard to earn a college degree. Time, tears, sweat, late nights studying, many financial resources...you finish the list. Then attaining the first job. A foot in the door, a step on the ladder, a starting place. In time, you develop into the leader and woman you were called to be in the workplace. And then comes the deliberate choice to lay all that down. The prestige and power you held at your hard-earned job. The options you had financially when you were a two-income household. To rip that from your life and offer it up to God so that you can treasure the people who are not destroyed by moth and rust (Matthew6:20). This is an example of what it means to be poor in spirit.
I am not saying that working moms are not poor in spirit. Sometimes there is not choice financially, whether she a single parent or husband under or unemployed. Sometimes it's a matter of submission to your husband who asks his wife to work. Sometimes it's a matter of knowing who you are or aren't. But for the woman who is given a choice: to work outside the home or be in the home, I see it as a sacrifice of self. Romans 12:1, my paraphrase:

Offer your whole self continually as a sacrifice to the Lord in logical response of worship to the grace by which He extended to you when He saved you.

In preaching on this verse this weekend, our pastor said, because of your realizing what gift God gave when He saved you, "you can never go back to who you were." And really, in choosing to be a worker in the home, I may never be able to go back to the person I was before I made that choice. I have missed out on years of technology upgrading in the web development world, I would not simply be able to walk back into that field of work. An extended relative, whose husband became unemployed, who was a stay-at-home mom, struggled to find any sort of work and although thankful for an income, she isn't in the same field of work as before making the choice to be at home.
Is it worth it? Honestly, sometime I need to remind myself that it is. But, it doesn't take me long. Discipling my children is a big job. And this isn't a sacrifice just for children. It's a sacrifice for the peace and calmness of your entire household. And my relationships are the only thing going with me to heaven. I watch working mom's lives and I may become jealous but I don't stay there. In a way, I have traded the chaos of running for just "being" sometime.
And so I offer my whole self to God...including this blog.