Last week my family celebrated my wife, Donna’s, birthday.  As is our custom, often at evening meals, and always as special meals, we went around the table and each shared something for which we were thankful.  On birthdays we share something about the honoree for which we are thankful.  This time one of my children noted how mom always quietly puts her children first “She always gives us the biggest piece of chicken, or lets us have the best cookie.  She insists that we always go before her.  She always sacrifices little things for her children and is always tending to our needs first.”  I concur with my children about my wife and our 3rd grade teacher.
That same day I read the blogpost, Dear Moms, You Do More Than You Know from Kevin DeYoung.  Pastor DeYoung applies lessons from the women in the Book of Exodus to moms who often labor quietly and sacrificially without being noticed.
 
Dear moms, I know a lot of you are crazy busy with the “blessings” in your life that don’t always feel like blessings . . . I don’t know what God’s up to in your life . . . But here’s what I know from the first chapter and a half of Exodus: Up to this point in Exodus, the entire story has been moved forward by women, and specifically by women looking after children. This great story of divine deliverance . . . would never have gotten off the ground if it weren’t for women. No Moses, no Exodus, no redemption if it weren’t for moms, and midwives, and big sisters . . . God used them all in mighty ways-in ways they couldn’t fully understand at the time, in the ways that changed the world-and all by simply loving children and protecting their little lives. What’s true for teachers and nursery workers and volunteers and grandmothers and aunts and nieces and babysitters is especially true for the mothers reading this blog: you do more than you know. Press on, mom, your labors are not in vain.
I concur again.  Yes, press on, moms (and dads).  Your labors are not in vain.  You do more than you know!