How Parents Pray
“Being a loving parent is work that guarantees the transformation of the ego for in the work of rearing children the limits of your selfishness, need and smallness are continually challenged. Somehow you find within your heart a love that is willing to stretch further and further. In this sense, the work of parenting is profoundly blessed work. Some people pray in words; in the work of raising children, parents pray every day with every fibre of their being.”
John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, page 164
Spot on. As I posted elsewhere just yesterday:
“Those who want to be married and make love to their spouses while precluding conception are like larvae who who think they don’t want to be butterflies. They are discounting the powerful transformational impact of becoming a parent. Funny you mention diapers. I’ve changed a few thousand I suppose, and disliked changing each one. Yet I have never sensed that I was doing God’s work more than when I was changing the grossest diapers imaginable.”