I can gravitate between a noble sense of martyrdom, believing I am the best mother ever, and a nagging sense of failure. Why can’t I shake the underlying tone of irritation that comes as I reply to “Mommy?” for the 500th time? Why can’t I keep from snapping when my daughter asks me the same question for the 10th time in 10 minutes?
The other day it was the poop. And then it was the dirt. And then there was my daughter’s favorite game of 20 unnecessary questions. And then there were the scribbles on the new table.
The poop came and interrupted my lunch. I swear my son waits to do his business until I sit down to eat after I’ve ensured that everyone else has been fed. The call of “Mommmmyyy! I need you to wipe me!” is too perfectly timed with my attempted first bite to be coincidental.
Then came the dirt. I sent the kids outside so I could tackle the kitchen in quiet. Then came the call, “Mommmmyy! Micaiah’s doing something bad!” He had dumped dirt from the garden bed all over the play gym, his siblings, and himself.
The dirt cued the questions. “Mommy, can you wash my feet?” over and over. “In a minute,” I said for what felt like the 900th time.
The last straw was the scribbles. While I was doing those things, the 2-year-old was getting artistic on the brand new, white table I had just bought.
My daughter chose the moment of me furiously scrubbing the table to ask yet again, “Mommy, nowww can you wash my feet?”
“I said HOLD ON!” was my patient, maternal reply. Even as I yelled and felt justified in my yelling, I knew I was about to be filled with regret.
Motherhood probably should have run in the title sequence of Dirty Jobs. This week I have cleaned pee off the floor, wiped too many poopy bottoms to count, cleaned smeared guacamole and yogurt, and so on. There’s always dirt. There are always crumbs. There’s always something sticky. In the words of Luke from Gilmore Girls, kids always have “jam hands.”
The truth is sometimes it all feels beneath me. When I read Oh the Places You’ll Go, I didn’t think those places would include so much poop. There are a lot of things I could be doing right now—things that wouldn’t so often involve dealing with other people’s bodily functions.
That’s when that noble sense of martyrdom creeps in. I can feel like a silent sufferer, an unsung hero. Surely, when I am dead, they will resurrect monuments in my honor. There might be a movie. At the very least, these children of mine should recognize and appreciate all I do.
But most of my indignation evaporated at the sight of my daughter’s crumpled face. She just wanted me to wash her feet. To wash her feet. Hello, Jesus, looking over my shoulder saying “Ahem.”
There was another who washed the feet of messy, needy people. And He didn’t do it with a chip on His shoulder, grumbling about all the other things He could be doing, which for Him was sitting on a throne of glory in Heaven. He did it joyfully. He did it humbly. He did it on the way to a cross.
“Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them” (John 13:14-17).
Jesus came “not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He didn’t have to come to wash our dirty feet and put up with our nonsense. It was anything but pretty, and it was most definitely beneath Him. If anyone had a right to complain about the lowliness of His job, it was Him. Yet He never did.
Jesus was Lord and Teacher. We are neither of those things. We are not greater than our master. So what if we laid aside our sense of martyrdom? What if we joyfully embraced the humbleness of our jobs and stopped begrudgingly trudging through it? Jesus says we will be blessed.
As I told my daughter when I asked her forgiveness, it takes a long time to get a new heart and God is still working on mommy’s. We might not become a joyful servant overnight, but we also know God is slowly working His heart into ours.
After all, good and beautiful things grow from lowly dirt and a little poop makes excellent fertilizer. Lucky for us moms, we have plenty of both.
Originally published on the author’s blog
by Laura Niebauer Palmer 
by Jennifer Toscano 
by Shannon Evans 
