Amateur Hour

I recently stumbled across this article comparing life as a stay-at-home-mom to life in a monastery. It made me look at my everyday tasks in a whole new light. Here’s an excerpt:

Hence, a mother raising children, perhaps in a more privileged way even than a professional contemplative, is forced, almost against her will, to constantly stretch her heart. For years, while raising children, her time is never her own, her own needs have to be kept in second place, and every time she turns around a hand is reaching out and demanding something. She hears the monastic bell many times during the day and she has to drop things in mid-sentence and respond, not because she wants to, but because it’s time for that activity and time isn’t her time, but God’s time.

…never send to know for whom the monastic bell tolls; it tolls for me!