Back when I had a houseful of little children to tend to, Nate would often walk in the door after a 13 hour work day and say, “So, what did you do today?”

As an at-home mom, I didn’t have a good answer. Every day was jam-packed with activity and hard work, but I couldn’t give him a summary statement about what I’d done. My temptation was to spout a litany of minutiae in a minute-by-minute report, which of course was the last thing he wanted to hear. After giving a nebulous answer, I’d ask him the same thing. “What did you do today?”

If he’d had a day in which he couldn’t point to anything specific he’d finished, he’d still respond with confidence. He’d say, “It was a building-block day.”

I liked the upbeat sound of that and knew what he meant. So why didn’t I have anything good to say when he asked me what I’d done all day? I decided to give it some thought and come up with a succinct answer, especially for those frustrating days when I hadn’t been able to check anything off my to-do list.

Knowing Nate wasn’t interested in the long answer to any question at that point in his day, I crafted my statement to be short but relevant to my purposes as a mom. When he next asked the what-did-you-do question, I was ready. “I raised your children,” I summarized. That seemed to satisfy us both.

There’s only one problem. If too many building-block, raising-children days stockpile, discouragement can take over. Most of us are result-oriented. If we can’t see the effects of our efforts, we begin questioning our calling.

I well remember a day when I reached a discouragement low. The five kids we had at the time were ages 10, 8, 6, 2 and 1, four boys and one girl. I was on my hands and knees wiping up under two high chairs for the umpteenth time, questioning the choices that had put me there. Self-pity had arrived, priming my pump with tears, and I did the only thing I knew to do: whine.

Since the children didn’t care that their mom was having a  crisis, I took it straight to the top and whined to God. But he stopped me immediately.

Bringing Scripture to my mind (below), in essence he said, “Don’t wipe the floor for your toddlers; wipe it for me.” In one concise statement, he had crashed my pity paty.

The Bible says  Everything we do ought to be done for God, not other people, not even needy toddlers. If we elevate our motives that way, grunt work is lifted to a divine level, and our jobs become privileges, because they have God’s attention and our work matters to him. If we do it for others or ourselves, we quickly lose perspective, as I had.

I had wanted children and was thankful for each one. I’d hoped to be able to stay home full time and was glad I could. The Lord had given me the desires of my heart, and I’d responded by whining.

If we work directly for God without any middle-men, we’re entrusting the most difficult tasks of life to someone who notices, appreciates and understands. Pastor Erwin Lutzer put it this way: “Anything done in private with a desire to glorify God is remembered by him eternally and kept safe in his care.” That’s pretty exciting when applied to wiping a floor!

Pastor also said that what we do is not as important as the person for whom we do it. If I wiped the floor under the high chairs with a happy heart because I did it for God, it could actually change drudgery into worship. And there on my knees, holding a rag loaded with toddler spill-over, that’s exactly what happened.

“Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31)