This is My Work

I just finished reading Gap Creek by Robert Morgan.  I'd read it before, years ago, and something compelled me to find it and read it again.
The tagline is "The Story of a Marriage," but it's much more than that.  It's a story of struggle, of coming of age, of hardships, of loss, and of life.  When I came upon the scene where the main character goes into labor, I thought, "Here it is.  This is what I was meant to find by rereading this book."

This is my work, I thought.  This is the work only I can do.  This is work meant for me from the beginning of time.  And this is work leading through me in an endless chain of people all the way to the end of time.  Other women have done their work down the course of the years, and now it's my turn .  There's nothing to do but take hold of the pain and wrestle with it.  It was not a choice to give in.

~ Gap Creek

Not only in labor, but as a mother, as a wife, and as a woman this applies to me.

To all of us.

We are all here to do our work.

It may not always be pleasant - at times even painful, but it is ours, nonetheless and our only choice is to take hold of it.

I've found that much more often than not, the reward overshadows the struggle.