I receive a daily morning email, Elisabeth Elliot Devotional. This morning she shared a letter from a mother of two children under two, who was feeling great pressure with life being difficult. I remember well the days she was referring to, as I had three children aged three and under, and it wasn’t too long ago. Those were some hard days. Often older ladies would pat me on the head and say, “Enjoy it. It goes by so fast.” I thought they had amnesia, and I promised myself I’d never utter those same words.

Compounding the hard work was my husband’s long hours, the fact that we made my first move ever (to cut down on his two and a half hour commute), and that we didn’t find a church home until many months later. I delivered our third child just a month after we made the move. A lot of things were still in boxes, the master bedroom was Cotton Candy Pink with a fancy teal wallpaper boarder, and I didn’t know my way around town. But that was O.K., as it’s not worth going anywhere with three small children. Timing newborn feedings, toddler snack times, and preschool naptimes with precision so that you can get through the check-out in 37 minutes flat is not an exercise for the faint of heart.

And then the cashier assisting the lady in front of you utters the most dreadful thing you could hear at that moment…. “Price check on register 8.” Have mercy.

It was easy to lose perspective during that time. I thought they’d never get older. I thought they’d never get out of diapers. I thought I’d have to get up several times a night forever. And with another one on the way, it does seem like forever. Keeping perspective was and is an ongoing task, but it is easier now than when they were all babies. This trial by fire produces in mothers the grit they will need for the coming years, the long haul.

Elisabeth Elliot speaks of Amy Carmichael’s legacy, the Dohnavur Fellowship in India. She writes, “There, day after day, year in and year out, Indian women (most of them single) care for little children, handicapped children, infirm adults, old folks. They don’t go anywhere. They have none of our usual forms of amusement and diversion. They work with extremely primitive equipment–there is no running water, for example, no stoves but wood-burning ones, no washing machines. In one of the buildings, I saw this text: ‘There they dwelt with the King for His work.’ That’s the secret. They do it for Him. They ask for and receive His grace to do it. I saw the joy in their lovely faces.”