Our Family is Our Ministry

Last week we honored Blessed Mother Teresa in the Catholic Church. I reposted a blog post about one of my favorite Blessed Mother Teresa quotes on my Facebook page. As that quote was on my mind, we went to an adoration service with one of our local homeschool groups. Watching all the moms who were choosing to bring their young children with them to an hour long service, I was thinking how counter-cultural it all is, having children, staying home, homeschooling. The thought fully hit me:

Our Family is our Ministry

Now this isn’t anything earth shattering or new, however I think it’s worth repeating.

Real Life Families for Christ

When we walk out the door with our children we present an image of a family. What kind of family are we presenting to the world? I’m not saying that we should be fake or that we have to pretend or that we need to be perfect. Far from it actually. What we need to do is just be a family!

Going about our normal daily life of running errands, going on field trips, going out for a meal – we present an image that is counter cultural. We live in a society that is quick to get children off to school for pre-K (because it’s good for them!), where big families are an oddity, and people are more pro-life about animals than humans.

We often have to endure comments like “you have your hands full” “are all of those kids yours?” and my personal favorite “so you must be babysitting today!”

Yet, I also get comments like “You have such a beautiful family” and “your kids were so well behaved at dinner tonight, it’s refreshing to see”.

Earlier this week I asked the question on my Facebook page, “do you say prayers before meals at a restaurant?” Honestly, I thought the response would be 50/50, but everyone who replied said that yes they did say prayers before meals. That’s putting your family out there, not for show, but “this is what we do at home before meals so therefore this is what we do when we are out in public.”

Most of us don’t have time to be heavily involved in outside activities. Often we may feel like we are not doing enough. But right now our main priority is to love, serve and educate our children. That is our ministry. That is what God is calling us to do. In our homes and out in the world.