While visiting with a friend after church, we began sharing stories of our younger mothering days. You may be an older mom now or maybe a younger mother with small children. I share a little of my story here that you may relate to~when my first son was born, I was just 21.  As a new mom, I was delighted to have a little boy that together with my husband, Herb, we could raise to love the Lord.
 
We were in a large mega church with lots of ministry opportunities. We served in the choir, in small vocal teams, in a church plant, and participated in different bible study and visitation programs as well as teaching Sunday School.  Several days/nights a week were spent at church serving in these various ministries. All was going well, except for the fact our son kept getting sick due to being left in the church nursery so often and being exposed to lots of germs. So of course, I began missing visitation night or bible study night due to Daniel being sick. Right away, one of the older ladies took it upon herself to find out why I had been missing. After explaining my son had been sick several times, she then began to tell me how Satan was probably using my son’s sickness to keep me from ministry.
 
Now you may be thinking, how terrible……………..or you may be thinking, yeah–that’s the way I feel. Well, like I related,  I was a new mom looking for guidance and thinking this director of ministry must have a point, I continued bringing our son whether he was sick or not, due to the “wise” advice I was receiving. One Sunday morning while singing in the choir in front of thousands of people, my number was called out to come immediately to the nursery, which I did and found a very sick son with a nasty temp who needed to be taken home right away.
 
Thank God that soon after that episode, SANITY walked into my life in the form of a young woman a couple years older than me. She was a missionary’s daughter who had recently married and had a son about a year older than mine. She pulled me aside and let me know that I had a ministry already and that ministry was my husband and son. I truly needed a friend at that point in my life who could give me wise, biblical counsel. When I confided in her how guilty I had been feeling, she took me to the Word and showed me what God expected from me. And you know what I found? She was exactly right! And I was FREE! What a relief to realize my spirituality didn’t depend upon being at church three and four nights a week and that God didn’t view my child as a burden that was stifling my love for Him!
 
Today if you were to sit down and talk with me, you would find one of my burdens is for those women who are struggling with guilt over the fact they don’t have a programmed ministry they lead because they are just maxed out caring for their families. In their eyes, their children are keeping them from serving God. My dear ladies~this couldn’t be farther from the truth and is a lie you should turn a deaf ear to.
 
When you serve the least of these, you are serving Me~that’s what Jesus said. Your ministry is to your family first and then if there is extra time and energy, give that away to those in need around you.  If you are worn out, dragging your kids all over the place so you can feel spiritual–give yourself the freedom to STOP. If you desire to know what ministry God has called you to, begin studying I Timothy and Titus and you’ll see you are FREE to serve Him by serving your families. Truly, do you believe that what you are doing at home is MINISTRY? Because in God’s eyes, IT IS.
 
So young moms, lay aside the guilt for not living up to man made expectations and begin to look at life through the lens of scripture. Are you living with guilt over something God doesn’t expect from you in the first place? Get into the Word and embrace what God says about your life.  Your children are your heritage from the Lord~embrace them and raise them to the glory of God!

Rhonda blogs over at Walking with Sarah