The Happy Wife Project: Parenting is Not a Job

The Happy Wife Project is a year-long effort to alter life for the better. Throughout the next 12 months, it will explore beauty, a woman's heart and soul, the domestic routine, and making the house a home. Every month, there will be a challenge oriented toward making your life better. You'll have the opportunity to make the challenge your own and link up a blog post discussing how it went. 

To kick off this project, I'm part of a great blog hop of moms! We're talking about our expectations of what we thought parenting would be like - and what it turned out to actually be. Be sure to read all the stops along the way! You can check out more about The Happy Wife Project here.

July 21 - Amy @ Go Forth and Mother

July 22 - Julie @ These Walls

July 23 - Kelly @ This Ain't the Lyceum

July 24 - Sarah @ Fumbling Toward Grace

July 25 - Nichole @ Yackity Shmackity

July 26 - Colleen @ Martin Family Moments
July 27 - Lindsay @ Lindsay Sews

July 28 - Olivia @ To the Heights

July 29 - Ana @ Time Flies When You're Having Babies

July 30 - Jamie Jo @ Make Me a Saint

July 31 - Michele @ My Domestic Monastery

Parenting is Not a Job

Growing up in a big family meant there were always people around.  Growing up on the tail end of a big family meant that most of these people were older.  But ever since I was a young girl, I knew I wanted to be a mom and have lots of babies.  12 to be exact, and I would doodle their future names in notebooks and be around little kids as often as I could.  I took on jobs babysitting and worked in a daycare.  These jobs changed me a little because I would come home exhausted, wondering if having babies was a little more work than I had bargained for.  But I still longed to be a mom and have a sweet bambino to hold.

Luckily for me, it was in God's plans that I married young and had my first child on my 24th birthday.  What a gift! After having my own baby, I realized two important differences between having your own child versus watching someone else's child:

1) 

Raising a child is a lot of physically demanding, emotionally draining, mentally tiring hard work. You are responsible for their well-being, you are their example, and you are with them 24/7.   My dream number of kids went quickly from 12 down to 6 :)

BUT...

2) You'll never love a child more than the child you mother.

I never wondered again if raising kids was too much work, like I used to have after watching other people's kids.  I knew this motherhood thing was my gig.  Yes, it can be so hard and isolating in the beginning, but things get easier and days go smoother and before you know it, you're pining away for another baby to hold.  Children give your life a new purpose, it's so hard to even remember what my husband and I used to do with our time before kids!  

When I see young couples now who look at our large family and let me in on a little secret that they're not sure if they want to be parents because just watching their {insert difficult child relative} is really hard...I tell them, yes it is, but it's the most rewarding thing you can do.  The unconditional love you have raising your children is work, but it's not a job.  It's a vocation, and God will give you the grace you need when you need it.