If you’re struggling with a season of feeling “less than” or “un-usefulness,” I hope this encourages you. 💛
One reason why stay-home-parents will always earn my deep respect is that being a SAHM was truly one of the hardest seasons of my life. Without the same yardstick of usefulness that I was accustomed to as a doctor in a high-stress, high-achievement environment, I lost a sense of who I really was.
Yet, I know now that those days were not wasted. God used that season to grow my identity in Him, to peel away the labels I tried so hard to anchor my self-importance in.
Now, without a paid salary, a formal designation or concrete job scope… with mpox raging in this part of the world and my struggling to find my place in this new outbreak, I’m in the same languid space where spiritual formation grows with deep fertility.
But I encourage myself, that the God who sent me as a specialist with the United Nation during the COVID-19 outbreak for a seemingly useful mission, is the same God who journeyed quietly with me when I was a SAHM with severe ante and postpartum depression who didn’t know she could ever be useful, who wondered if there was more to life than the mundane routine of it all.
I am learning, that as much as I pray desperately every day for God to use me, I can pray He help me abide in Him first. For in the abiding, comes the fruit-bearing. In the fruit-bearing, comes usefulness to our Father, for the world, for His good purposes.
I pray you’ll find His heart through your abiding, too.