I am about to hit a milestone in motherhood- the end of diapers. Yes, it is true, I have been up to my eyeballs in diapers for the last four years of my life. Three of the those four years, included two children in diapers at the same time. It is a time of passage for my daughters to go from infancy to preschool. A time of change from giving bare basic care to my girls and moving toward one more step of independence. The diaper changing years have been somewhat of a learning curve for me. Learning to be ok with doing simple tasks and feeling that those actions serve a purpose. I have always been an individual who feels that there is grand purpose to our lives and on a search to find what that big thing is. Our society can carve our idea of purpose to blown up proportions. That in order to have purpose, it must be something that the world around us has to see or know about. My recent learning curve has taught me that there is immense purpose in the simple tasks that happen behind closed doors, day in and day out.

For every mom out there who is knee deep in the infant/toddler years, what you are doing this very moment- messy bun in hair, yoga pants on, load after load of laundry, scrubbing vomit out of your carpet, changing diaper after diaper (no joke, there were mornings I had changed six diapers before 9:00am), and that mundane routine of feedings- you are fulfilling the greatest purpose and calling you were meant to live! For much of our purpose has nothing to do with personal fulfillment, yet has everything to do with serving others- even though society may teach you otherwise.

You may not feel like yourself, your temper may be shorter, your patience tested, your brain not stimulated enough. Motherhood may have taken you from corporate meetings to play dates. It may have taken you from high fashion to nursing bras and stretchy pants. Having babies may have taken you from using your degree on a daily basis in your career to developing a degree in self-preservation, because there are days that you are truly just trying to survive the lack of sleep. At the end of the day, once you finally have your little ones settled, know that the hours you just put in doing all those redundant tasks, just gave another day of life to that tiny person sleeping in the room next to you.

The mundane can feel like it will never end, but it does, quicker than we all think. All of the sudden, your babies no longer rely on you for those duties that give them life for another day. They become more independent, and we regain some of our brain back! All those simple things add to a greater calling of purpose than we really comprehend.

I began this post with a picture of some beautiful flowers, I thought a pile of diapers was overkill! I chose flowers for their purpose in nature. The day to day life of a flower is quite simple. Yes, they look beautiful, and produce tantalizing scents, but a flower just sits there. People easily pass by flowers on their walk to work, not taking any time to stop and appreciate what they do for the environment we live in. Though a flower so delicate and simple day to day, in the larger scheme provides the movement of reproduction between plants. Plants, in turn provide a backbone to the earths ecosystem. Water, air, food, medicine, and more thrive from the plant. So that little flower you pass by that just sits there, is part of chain that gives you oxygen to breath everyday.

So next time you are engaging in a daily task, that feels like it has no purpose, remember that everything works together for a greater purpose than you can ever fathom. There is great purpose in the simple, every single day of our lives.

∼live your journey true∼