This is going to be short–I’ve got to get back to lesson planning for the week–but it’s been a theme of the whole day.

I have been entrusted with a great responsibility as a mom to Em, Jake, Maddie, Patrick and–for this year–Nina and Jane. This is a job with Matthew 28 implications. “Go into all the world and make disciples”–in my case, the world has come to me! It’s awesome, amazing, a treasure…

In the abstract, that is! In the day-to-day (and especially on weekends) it’s meal prep after meal prep; it’s loads and loads of laundry; it’s having to revisit fifth-grade math and high school geometry to help Em and Jane with homework (Nina’s in physics; I’ve told her not to bother with me); it’s sweeping the kitchen floor and discovering it’s dirty 30 minutes later; it’s (possibly most hated chore of all) having to shop at Walmart way more than the once-a-month trip I could get by with while living in Kansas.

And it’s awfully easy to get fixated on those things rather than on the eternal perspective. No, it’s more than easy; it’s human nature–human, sinful, self-centered nature.

What’s supernatural is to keep the eternal perspective in view, to hold onto it so that frustration is forgotten in the joyful knowledge that God will use my service to open up hearts to Him.

And God PROMISES that He can provide the strength and the power to do that for me. “Look at Me,” He tells me, “and I will lift you up.” Like Peter, I can stop looking at Christ and find myself wallowing in my own sea of self-pity (and my struggles to get out simply sink me deeper), or I can look up and find myself on top of the waves.

Look up, Jen, look up.