My Greatest Accomplishment (PS - I'm still working on it) + Printables!

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If you ask me to name my greatest accomplishment, I won't have to think very hard.  The most challenging and the most rewarding thing I've done is mothering my children.  There is nothing like it.  It's the "job" that I will have longer than any other.  It has required more of me and demanded that I grow way beyond myself.  The worries are many, but the wages are greater.  The hours are long and yet I've never had more fun.

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For me, There is no greater honor or privilege than being a mother.  This is the task for which I will save my greatest effort and it will be worth every resource demanded.  Technically speaking, this year marks the halfway point in my biological motherhood journey, although I'm fully aware that I will spend the rest of my life as a mother and stepmom.  Still, my middle child is nine - halfway to 18, and the boys are each two years in the other directions (ages 7 and 11).  My hands-on, flat-out, marathon-mothering days are at the halfway point.  Whew.

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I am aware that I am shaping future lives today.  Each dinner cooked, every behavior corrected, the countless tuck-ins, scrubbed hands, beds made and remade are fresh in my mind.  I'm still in the trenches of homework check-ins, sibling rivalry, video-game-monitoring madness and I'm on a first name basis with our pediatrician.

It's worth it.  They are worth it.  Each little soul is still stretching and exploring.  Opinions and world views are being formed.  Manners are being cultivated, like and dislikes are in the process of being refined.  These are the things that matter each day, not the mounting laundry or exploding dishwasher.  The beautiful things is that these mundane happenings are the grounds in which character is formed, relationships bloom.  The daily rhythms of life are where the most important work of my life is done.  My character, my attitude, my example will shape theirs.  May the Lord grant me the strength for the task.

A recent bloggers' personal thoughts, the calendar holiday and the graduation on my step daughter have reminded me recently of this most important of my responsibilities.  It's so easy to be blinded by the messes but I want to embrace the mystery of building people, my children.  How do you remember your own mother?  What is the role she played in shaping who you have become?  Does she know how you view your childhood?

PS - Be sure to click the links below each image for a Mother's Day Printable!

Note: I well-remember the years before I became a mother (when I desperately wanted to be one!) and the ache that Mother's Day brought.  I was lucky to have a great mother on whom I could focus my attention, but I will never forget the longing to join the club myself.  If this is you, hang on and hang in there.  Your purpose is just as important as mine, even if your role is different.  

If you are a mother without your child (through disease, choice or estrangement), you matter.  You are not alone.  

If you were not mothered well, I'm sorry.  You are not defined by her choices or her words.

The ones who call me mother/stemom.

Three Things Stepmothers Want

The Day I Became a Mother

Being Me is Best for Them

Mother's Day Thoughts (Stepmom)

Stepping Through Mothers Day

Mothering in the Storm

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