How to Survive Being a Stay At Home Mom When It Feels...Pointless

Do you feel invisible as a stay-at-home mom? While everyone talks careers and accomplishments, your day is spent breaking up arguments, wiping messes and pouring into little hearts, work no one else sees. Let me tell you something the world won't. Every unseen act of love is shaping an eternal soul. This isn't a pause on your purpose, this is kingdom work. If you've ever wondered, does what I do really matter? Our high school kids are headed off to co-op, and it's a little quieter day here at home with our younger kids. We got started right away with Morning Time. This week we learned a new song by our composer, Frederic Chopin. We're doing his revolutionary etude in C minor. We reviewed our artist, who's Albert Bierstadt, and we have finished all the paintings we're going to do on him. So we're moving on to a new artist, and I would really like to do Mary Cassatt. That's one we have never studied. We're also working on memorizing the First Ten Commandments. This is part of the simple Morning Time notebook that I've put together. You can find this on the blog. The link is below. Our new hymn for the month is God Will Take Care of You. And then I'm also having someone read the Gettysburg Address once a day. This is the speech that we're reviewing, and we're not really trying to memorize it so much as just hear it. The more we hear it, the more lines we remember from it naturally. If you're new here, hi, my name is Sherry. I'm a Christian, homeschooling mom to ten kids, married to my high school sweetheart, our oldest is 20, our youngest is two. We've been homeschooling right from the beginning, and I just love encouraging other moms in the great work that they're doing in their homes with their families. I show up here every week on YouTube, and I also share homeschooling resources over on the blog, OurLifeHomeschooling.com. If you're a mom like me, who feels called to spend the majority of your time at home with your children, this short window of time we have to invest in their lives, you are choosing the road less traveled. The world measures value by visibility, titles, income, recognition. So when your work happens at home, quietly, repetitively, and without applause, it's easy to believe the lie that it doesn't matter. But as Christians, we look to scripture as our final authority. In Deuteronomy 6, God commands parents to teach his truth diligently to their children. When you sit at home, when you walk along the way, when you lie down, and when you rise, this is everyday work. It's not glamorous. It's mundane daily life. When I first became a stay-at-home mom over 20 years ago, it was quite a big identity change. I had been a public school teacher for a few years, and then we had our son. When he was born, my desires completely shifted. I wanted more than anything to spend as much time with him as possible. Little did I know that this was the beginning of 20 plus years as a stay-at-home mom, investing in my kids, raising them, spending the majority of their childhood with them. It hasn't always been easy. I know what it's like to be buried in dishes, dinner, diapers, dirty laundry, but I also know how rewarding it is. I can say that I absolutely love what I do. Someone once told me, it's the hardest job you'll ever love, and I couldn't agree more. Let me just add real quickly that as much as I love being a stay-at-home mom, I'm not trying to discourage anyone who is a working mom. Some people could say that I am a working mom. I spend a couple hours each week putting together this content for you. There have been times in my mothering where I was fully at home. I wasn't doing anything else. Our kids needed me all the time. I had all little children. That was how a lot of my years were spent. I have a little bit more free time now that I have some older kids, but if you spend a lot of time with children, there will be days where you feel invisible. One of the biggest pitfalls I fell into as a new stay-at-home mom was believing that what I did really didn't matter. I could only see what was right in front of me, just the next meal I had to make, cleaning up the dishes, changing another diaper, and I didn't always have the long-term perspective that I should have had. When I quit teaching, we were in a stage of life where most of our friends were professionals, so this was really the road less taken. It was an identity shift. I had to find all new friends who were doing what I was doing. I had one mom. She was a sub at our school who pulled me aside quietly because she knew how sensitive the subject was, and she gave me some really great advice that was so encouraging. She was a mom who had stopped working temporarily to raise her kids at home until they were school age, and now she was coming back and finding her way in the workforce again. She told me this. She said, don't doubt yourself. Don't look back. You are making the best decision of your life. You're going to leave here tomorrow, and they're going to replace you. They can find anyone else to do your job, but no one can replace you in the life of your son. I can't tell you how many times those words have come back to me. You forgot the zero in there. It should be 2026. Okay, read it to me. He scatters the frost like ashes. Very good. Good job. By the way, when I'm done here, I'm going to sit down with you and do your math and your reading. Okay? Okay. I think as moms, we forget sometimes that the work we're doing right now is something that's going to live beyond us, and I like to compare this to any other kind of trade. If you have a product or you're marketing and advertising for some company, whatever it is that you spend your eight to four job or your nine to five job doing, if you build cars or construct houses or you're building a company, all of this pales in comparison to spending that same amount of time investing in someone else's life. The world places so much value on titles and accomplishments, on everything out there, but if you spend your time with a child, teaching them, helping them develop their interests, this is considered a waste. As Christians, this is a lie we need to face head on and stop believing. Jesus himself said, let the little children come to me, do not forbid them, for of such is the kingdom of God. God did not accidentally place your children in your care. He trusted eternal souls to you on purpose. Every time you model patience, speak the truth, pray over them, discipline with love, and point them to Jesus. You are doing work that is eternal. You may not see the fruit today, you may not see it for years, but in God's economy, your faithfulness, small acts of service, and obedience are never wasted. The Bible says again in Galatians, God is not mocked. Don't be deceived. Whatever you sow, that is what you will reap. You know what I want by my side when I'm 80 years old? My family. That's all I'll care about. My accomplishments will mean nothing, my material possessions will be nothing. I'll just want to have close relationships with our kids. That will be all that matters in that stage of life. If you want to learn more about avoiding this pitfall of believing that the work you do as a mom doesn't matter, you might like watching another video I did where I talk about all the things I've learned in 20 years as a stay-at-home mom. I'll link it for you. I once came across a poem by Ruth Harms Culkin, it's titled I Wonder, that really resonated with me as a mom. She said, You know, Lord, how I serve you with great emotional fervor in the limelight. You know how eagerly I speak for you at a women's club. You know how I effervesce when I promote a fellowship group. You know my genuine enthusiasm at a Bible study. But how would I react, I wonder, if you pointed to a basin of water and asked me to wash the calloused feet of a bent and wrinkled old woman, day after day, month after month, in a room where nobody saw and nobody knew. When you pour into the kids that God's entrusted to your care, you are working for something that will outlive you. And more importantly, God sees you. It's His approval that really matters. As promised in the title of the video, I want to give you some tips to help you survive when motherhood feels pointless. The first is to have a big picture perspective. Play the long game. You've chosen this because it's what you want more than anything, but it's not going to be easy. Like my husband says to me all the time, if it was easy, everyone would do it. Be laser focused on the reason you're doing what you're doing. Dave Ramsey says, the hard road is the road that moves you forward. There are going to be hard days, but keep moving forward. One of the ways I keep a big picture perspective is by spending every day in God's word. Reading the Bible will remind you of eternity and it will help you see your everyday struggles in the right perspective. A second thing that I make a priority is time alone every day. When it's nap time and after I finish reading aloud to the kids in the afternoon, I spend about an hour and a half every day away from the kids by myself just doing whatever I want to do. Now most of the time I spend working here on YouTube, but sometimes I just relax. This is time for me to breathe and do something that's enjoyable. Just because you've chosen to devote yourself to your children doesn't mean you have to spend every waking moment with them. The kids have been helping me make this simple dish that we have often around here. It's sweet potatoes, sausage, it's just plain ground sausage. I fry it up, fry the sweet potatoes separately. We cut up some apples and when the sausage is finished, I mix the apples in with it until they're nice and soft. We separately cook some green beans and then just mix it all together. This is really a healthy meal and it's pretty easy to make. Sometimes I add cinnamon. Other times I've also toasted some almonds and mixed those in. That's really good. We don't always have almonds on hand, but this is a healthy, quick meal to make. While I was making lunch, our kids were building Lincoln Log Towns and I find that every week there's something else they're into, so this was the toy of the week. We've had these all over the house and it's really like a landmine. You're just stepping over, hoping you don't knock over someone's Lincoln Log house. A couple of tears have been shed when a two-year-old walked past and knocked down a prized possession, but this has been entertaining the kids quite nicely. The third tip I have for you to thrive as a stay-at-home mom is to intentionally connect with friends who will encourage you in your role as a mom. No man is an island. Find an older Christian woman who will cheer you on or get together with some iron-sharpening friends so you can remind yourself that raising kids is the most important job in the world. One of my favorite things to do with our kids is to read to them, and this is how we end our homeschool day. Usually, I put our little one, Ben, down for a nap, but he was so happy today, so I told him, as long as you're happy, you can stay up and play, and so I spent some time. Usually, I read picture books to Ben and Holland first, but he didn't want to stay for the picture book. He was having fun, but he was listening, so I read Little Blue Truck and another book to Holland, and then we moved on to the chapter books we're doing right now, and we're kind of in the middle of switching with my younger kids. We finished up On the Banks of Plum Creek, and we've moved on to The Saturdays. This is written by Elizabeth Enright. It's a series I read to my older kids years ago, and it's just such a great series. It's The Melody Quartet by Elizabeth Enright, so I am really looking forward to reading this series to them. I'd love to hear from some of you moms out there. What are some of the tips you would give to maybe a new mom or someone that is struggling in the work they're doing with their kids? How do you thrive in your mothering? How do you reset when you've just had a really hard day? I want to remind you that motherhood doesn't sideline your calling. It refines it. This season isn't about visibility. It's about building people. And long after resumes fade and achievements are forgotten, the souls you poured into will still matter. That is eternal impact. If this video encouraged you, you may enjoy watching another video I did on a similar topic. It's titled, Play the Long Game. Why Moms Need to Look Beyond Today. Persevering in Motherhood. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you'll like and subscribe. I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms. I'll see you next week.