Our Greatest Work

As I was walking around the land today, I was doing some pretty heavy thinking. I had been thinking about my other blog and what I had written this week on there.
I thought about what really will matter in the end. I wondered about what my greatest work is in life. What is the most important aspect of this journey on earth.
As my feet were moving me across the green grass, I was making a mental list of my accomplishments and rating them. Its funny but one theme always came to the surface as the most important. Ahead of all others, or necessary for the outcome of what I had always seen as the most important.
In my younger years, I just don't think I understood what my greatest work was.
Raising my family always seemed paramount to all other jobs, but then today I realized that there was something ahead of even that.
I am not ready to tell you just yet, keep reading...
Looking over my own blog, there are accomplishments. Three children who have grown into wonderful adults, contributing to society in such positive ways. Simple living, a loving home, being able to sew, quilt, cook, make soap, spin wool, farm, knit etc. But none of those matter one tiny bit in the end of things. You can be Mrs. Organization, Mrs. Domestic Goddess and its not the most important work you have. Its just an external that might give you some recognition, but never be your legacy.
The work that is our greatest is the work of becoming a better person. Honest person, no games, no hiding, no white lies to cover emotional issues, just a good honest soul. Changing the things about yourself you know deep down are not beneficial to those around you. To stop making excuses for behaviors that are the result of negative influences in our childhood or by making wrong choices somewhere along the line. Its the work of being honest about who we are and what we need to be to be filled with compassion and understanding. Lacking completely in judgmental attitudes and preconceived ideas that were birthed in childhood with a child's perception of the world around them.
So, say you brag. I spent most of my life trying to be better. I know where it came from. Going to Seventh Day Adventist School and not being Adventist. I never fit in, didn't know the songs sung in worship, my parents smoked, and we didn't go to their church on Saturdays. The other kids were never allowed to play with me. I wasn't bad and neither were my parents.
But I was not one of "them". It scarred me, it really did. I can to this day feel the hurt of being excluded or not helped to understand. So I tried to be better than them. Show off. It carried over in my adult life and I knew it, and I knew why. I became a serious over achiever. Maybe you deal with anger or a feeling of inferiority or something. We all carry around childhood truths that no longer serve us well.
I never liked this aspect of myself and have spent the last two years working on it. Admitting it, telling others I don't like that aspect of myself. Sure cuts down on the thrill of others talking about it behind my back : )
I also hate that I get indignant at times by folks that don't understand things as I do. Working on that one too.
My accomplishments as a person, on who I will become now, will be better and in the proper perspective when done with sincere motivation. That is the greatest work, to live with sincere motivation. To work at being a good person for the right reason. Say for instance, there was no heaven, no starry crown, no mansion of gold. You die and that's that. Would you still be good ? Are you being a good person for the selfish reward or just because its the right thing to do, even with no reward ?
Hard questions.
Everyone knows deep down what their issues are and how we react to carrying around our own baggage. If you don't, believe me, others will share with you if you ask and don't loose it when they tell you honestly. And maybe, just maybe you stay so busy that you never have to look inside. Maybe you keep so much noise around you, you cannot even hear your own personal truth about what needs to be worked on.
You know if you are smothering and hovering to others or need to have things so you can prove something to family or friends. You can figure that one out if you look inside.
You know if you tell lies or shop more than you should. You know if you eat too much to numb the hard emotions that you would rather not deal with.
We all know what's wrong, if we sit quiet for a moment and think about it. Maybe we have anger issues and only our nearest and dearest know about it. We look great on the outside but wow, at home we can be a screaming maniac.
We know if we go overboard with our pets and treat them better than we do the humans in our neighborhood. Forgiving their bad habits more than we do the bad habits of those God put in our lives. It show us that we are in need of emotional connection with our children or others in some way. Or maybe we are trying to show love to them the way we wish we had been loved. We know what it is for us. Everyone else knows that about us. People see us without blinders on. So here again our greatest work is to become sincere, compassionate, humble and to be filled with the type of love God shows us. Our greatest work is of course the most difficult. It means thinking about and practicing how to deal with so many situations. It means being honest with ourselves and not making excuses. I have been a good mother I think. My children tell me so and they have turned out to be extraordinary young people, but I know that I would have been a better mother, had I started working on "our greatest work", while they were small, but still I can set an example of how change is benefical at any age and at any stage in life.