quiet service

it's thanksgiving week, which means a lot of reflection time and/or stress. for me it's reflection. i don't stress about thanksgiving. i'm not really a holiday person. i love holidays, but i don't go all out decorating every inch of my house or carrying out traditions. and i don't do the black friday thing either cause well, we don't have the money for that, as cheap as things are. it's not worth getting into more debt just to buy stuff and battle the other crazies out that day.

the other night, when i was feeling particularly sorry for myself, i had this thought. and it basically went like this:

before i was pregnant, i could go out, often, and deliver treats to friends. help watch their kids if they had appointments or were pregnant and needed some rest. i could show up to a service project and actually serve and work and sweat along side everyone else. i didn't have to do a lot of coordinating to get out my door and to a tiny bit of service. 

but now, two kids later and another pregnancy in the works, i can't. do. anything. i'm too tired to leave my house. i can't run into different stores to stroll around and find things that will cheer people up without a massive production of prepping children to head out the door then wrestle them in and out of car seats and in and out of shopping carts. geez, typing the entire process is making me tired. this pregnancy, just thinking about slightly strenuous activities literally makes me tired. and service projects? there's no way i can go to a service project because my husband probably has to be there and one of us has to chase the kids and it can't be him. 

and then in the same train of thought i became literally enlightened and it finally hit me: my service is here at home with these babies and my husband. my husband is a bishop right now, and his service is needed much more than mine. the service i can give him is to take care of the kids and the home and let him go out and take care of everything he needs to. it's caring and teaching my children.

i mean, we all know that, but do we really, really, know that? has it sunk in? it finally sunk in for me. i don't always love it, but i get it now.

and to sum it all up in the most perfect way possible, my friends at the small seed wrote this on IG one day: