A Wife's Daily Offering Up To The Lord

I've been pondering much as of late, what my role as a Catholic wife should be. I began to pray and ask the Lord to make clear in my heart how to be a better wife to my husband and a better mother to my children. There had to be more to holy matrimony I thought, than the mundane daily routine of washing clothes, washing babies and keeping house. But as with anything and everything in this world, that which is done simply for the sake of doing with no inclusion of the Lord is an empty hollow act. And then it hit me. Our daily home keeping is in fact holy if we allow it to be. If we include Jesus in every one of those tasks. Our merciful Lord has given us our vocation we accepted and with it those daily things which yes, even laundry are our opportunities to become saints within our vocation of wife.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think that doing dishes will get us canonized but if we offer them up to the Lord each day and do them out of pure love and dedication first to Him who gave his life for us and then to our beloved spouse, we can find the silver lining of holiness within them.

This goes for our dear husbands too. In his duties of taking out the garbage, painting, tinkering and even giving the kids a bath (all though that's more fun than dishes), he too has the opportunity to offer them up to the Lord and in doing so he/we not only do what our vocation calls us to do (among many many other things) but we do them out of love and selflessness not mere duty.

So basically what I am trying to say is that we need to open our hearts to Jesus, not just in the big things in life, the hard challenges but also in the smallest of things. For he wants to be in all things we do. To comfort, love, encourage, even share a laugh or two with us. If we include him daily in the simplest of things we can't help but gain a better perspective on how he will always be with us especially in the more difficult of times. And ultimately our marriage can't help but be blessed with so much thought and prayer being given to our Lord.

With this in mind I have begun to say a prayer before each chore or task I set out to do. Even washing diapers has become more of a joy because I offer it up to the Lord and I know that I am not alone in that laundry room. He is with me there and every where. I do get tired as we all will and since we are not perfect even a prayer to Jesus may not always make the floor scrubbing fun. But if we begin to make this offering a habit each day then eventually it will become second nature.

So let us remember that being the Keepers of our home is a vocation that the Lord has called us to accept and that our "yes" like Mary's yes didn't end with her "I will" or our "I do". We must continue to say "yes Lord" and in doing so our daily home keeping is an act of love that can be holy if we strive for it to be so.