I concur with everyone who says, “Marriage is hard work.” I have definitely gotten to the point of going as far as temporarily removing my wedding band because of a very serious argument my husband and I had but we are both flawed. People are entitled to write about what they feel, I respect that but as Christians, there should be boundaries set when it comes to sharing something about our significant others that puts them in a bad light. After all, if it were the other way around, I don’t think you’d like your husband to be talking about what he dislikes about you. That’s like encouraging people to gossip about someone you love and that is wrong. It can definitely go both ways and for this reason, it is more prudent to keep private affairs exactly just that, private.
There are a lot of things that go on in one’s household and I don’t know all the details and I’m not judging anyone (although it’s expected some people may find someone’s opinion to be judgmental regardless) but some of what I read actually makes me think what are stay-at-home mothers so exhausted of? We know what’s expected of being a wife and a mother. Sure I don’t like the eternal cycle of having to wash dishes and other things, having to cook especially when hypoglycemia hits me (I understand other mothers have other conditions far worse) but that’s expected of us. It is our role.
It may be that exhaustion and the feeling of being burned out occurs especially when people take on more than what God originally intended for them. God sees what we do (and what we don’t do) and so, to desire constant validation and approval from family members who sometimes forget to thank you for your labors is setting yourself up to have all those pent up emotions of bitterness. It feels good to be appreciated and most especially when the kids tell you out of the blue that they love you but ask yourself, “Am I doing my part to cultivate that kind of environment?”
On motherhood, I have 2 children, a teenage son and a third grader little princess. I’m definitely not an expert but I do encourage my children to pursue what I see to be their interests and gently nudge them to develop what I see them to be gifted at. Am I tired? Not really. The only time I feel really stressed out and exhausted is when I take my kids to take the state’s standardized tests and end of the school year evaluations for my daughter. I do this bit and my husband reads the Bible with them which I occasionally do when he is not around.
I don’t have a perfect life or a perfect anything but I can definitely say that half our woes, unhappiness and discontent lessens when the change begins in us by accepting the fact that things in this world will not always go the way we want them to especially when it comes to getting validation and appreciation from other people and that most of all, remembering that our God came into this world and humbled himself into a man in the likeness of a servant, who came to serve and not be served. He was short on getting the recognition He ought to have gotten from His chosen people.
As Christians, He expects us to be more like Him in this regard. The process? Definitely a long one that will continue on until His return.
“Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Matthew 20:26-28
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