Three...

THREE kids...feels like a lot.

Not just in the day in day out tasks, like wiping noses and making meals and reading stories and bathing...but the responsibility of raising three girls in the instruction and discipline of the Lord...feels like a lot.

Three mouths to feed and bodies to clothe. Three educations. Three proms. Three weddings!!!

Three hearts to nurture. Three souls to win to Christ.

For some reason the magnitude of this responsibility is just now hitting me. It's easy to get into "survival mode" with three little ones, but I want to do more than that. I don't want to just make it through the day. With a newborn, that's all I'm doing right now. At the end of the day, if everyone is dressed and fed and not crying (or at least not all three crying at once), I consider that a successful day. But in the very near future, my days will require much more than that. Three little ones is physically exhausting. Three older ones will be emotionally exhausting. This blessing of motherhood is no easy task.

I'm learning that motherhood is all about prayer. We can discipline, we can train, we can love...but in the end, it's the Lord who captures their hearts. I have no control over their hearts. And that's hard for me to accept, since I'm an extreme control freak. So I'm committing myself to prayer....

"But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit."

-Jeremiah 17:7-8