You Cannot Be Replaced

You do know you're indispensable, don't you?

On my worst homemaking/homeschooling days, I don't think I'm anything special around here. But on those rare days when I wonder if I could be doing something more important, my mom has always reminded me that if I were pursuing a career in the "real world", I'd be instantly replaceable if I decided to quit and stay home. But at home, there is no one else who will ever be the mother of these 8 children.

2007

Yes, someone could fill my shoes. My mother-in-law beautifully and gracefully stepped into the shoes of the mother of my father-in-law's first three children after she was tragically killed in a car accident. But their mother wasn't replaced. She was augmented. My mother-in-law loved and cared and became a mom, but she didn't replace their mother because their mother was indispensable.

Yesterday Christian asked me in his funny five-year-old boy way, "Why can't I call you Kendra?" I smiled and squeezed him close to my hip and then replied, "Because there are only 8 people on this earth who get to call me Mom, and you are one of them!"