A bit of encouragement.

I shall now have one mouth the more to fill, and two feet the more to shoe;
more disturbed nights, more laborious days, and less leisure for visiting, reading, music, and drawing.

Well! this is one side of the story, to be sure, but I look at the other.

Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery.

Here is a soul to train for God, and the body in which it dwells is worthy all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant.

I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom, while I minister in Chist’s name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation my other darlings had left me.

Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to your mother’s heart, welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares, to her life-long prayers!

Oh, how rich I am, how truly, how wondrously blest!

- Elizabeth Prentiss-

(from Stepping Heavenward)

That I will think of these words on the hard days and that I would make myself a "willing sacrifice...to my time, strength, health, tender care and life-long prayer." And always remember that though the days are long, the years are very short.