The baby didn’t sleep well last night which always leaves me feeling anxious, wondering how I will face the day of diapers and chores and sibling fights without adequate rest. The demands of the day often feel so great and I often feel so not enough to meet them.
But I sat down with my coffee this morning, trying to grab some restoration through caffeine and a few minutes in the word while a child squirmed on my lap. We read the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand and it helped me remember: God is often more interested in working through our lack than through our plenty.
We have an idea that God wants us to bring Him our strengths and resources and talents so He can use us, but actually God especially loves to use our weakness and need. He loves meeting great demand through “not enough” people. He loves to create bounty out of bankruptcy.
We can face the day of great demands because we have the God of great grace.
Happy Mother’s Day friends. Like me, I hope you’re getting some time away with no one asking you for snacks or to wipe their butt. Unlike me, I hope you didn’t have to clean applesauce off your bedroom carpet last night…
It’s been 3 weeks since my book released and if you haven’t, I hope you’ll grab a copy. It’s a strange thing to write a book on motherhood because at least in some way, you are setting yourself up as a kind of authority on the subject. “Author” is, after all, the root of the word “authority.” I’ve questioned a lot if I’m worthy of that title…if I’m a good enough mom.
It’s a question that often swirls in my mind and I suspect in the minds of others. Am I a good mom? Am I good *enough*? Have I done just enough to fall into the category of “good” and escape the category of “bad?” The problem is that perhaps I am good enough one day, but fail miserably the next. Trying to be good enough feels like trying to climb a muddy slope, advancing 5 feet only to slide back 20 and then try, try, try again. And this is why motherhood keeps us very close to our need for the Gospel.
It shows that there is actually something quite wrong with us and not in the simple sense that we sometimes make mistakes, but something wrong at our very core. We have an unshakeable sense of an external standard and a disquieting knowledge that we have not met it. What we are is not what we “should” be. Try as we might, we can never be good enough because there is no good enough. In and of ourselves, we can never reach the top of the muddy slope.
The Gospel of grace changes the questions. While we are wondering, “good or bad,” it is asking “in or out?” The only categories it is concerned with are “dead in sin” or “alive in Christ.” And the difference between the two is not just enough grit to climb the top of the hill, but the sovereign hand of God which has picked us up and placed us there. Trying to merit grace is like climbing back down the hill to slide around in the mud some more.
The irony is that the “good” mom, the best mom will be the one who sits atop the hill she didn’t climb and rests in the favor she didn’t earn, content to simply be “in Christ.” For In Christ, we have been renamed, not good or bad, but “mine.” In Christ, there is an abundance of mercy and grace and love for moms who have fallen short. And that…is very good news.
In other exciting news, e welcomed Shiloh Stephen 6 weeks ago. Life with 6 kids is…just about as chaotic as you would imagine…but equally as rich. I am so thankful for these gifts.
There is an idea that traditional femininity is weak and outdated, that for women to be strong, we have to be just like men. Women who tend the home, who nurse and nurture know nothing of battle.
I beg to differ.
Moses’s mother, in fierce maternal protection, defied a ruler. In the simple act of nursing her son, she nursed a rebellion against her people’s oppression. She raised up the one whom God would raise up to be their deliverer.
Mary, in simply submitting her body to shelter and grow a baby, became the mother of the Messiah, the vessel of the lion of Judah who would defeat our greatest enemy. Thus, she opened her mouth not to sing a lullaby, but to speak of casting down thrones and scattering the proud.
“The wise woman builds her house,” and she builds in quiet, but mighty subversion. She pushes back darkness with the light of love and grace. She raises the sword of truth to teach and admonish and train. She tends and nurses and nurtures, and she does so as an act of war against powers and principalities.
Who knows what seeds planted in the soil of our homes God may grow to work His will? We don’t have to spurn femininity to be strong. We must wield it. We don’t have to go far to fight. The battle is here. And we are already warriors.
I’m excited to share the cover for my book! The last main hurdle before release is getting some helpful endorsements. Hoping it will be out by Mother’s Day!
I swear sometimes I am tired from the day before it has begun. I’ll sit here for a few moments in the morning, sighing as I brace myself for what I know is about to come: another endless carousel of dishes and laundry, sibling fights resolution, a hundred wipes of butts and runny noses, painstaking explanation of object of the preposition and carrying the one.
This is all good I am doing. It is good work. Yet sometimes goodness wears on you. “Good” is not a word that evokes much excitement. In our writing curriculum, it’s a banned word because it’s boring. We are more apt to honor the great life, not the good one. Perhaps, that is why Paul commanded, “Do not grow weary in doing good.” He knew continual, simple, mundane good-doing could make you weary. And yet, he also promises that it is this goodness that will be the most fruitful. “In due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).
It has been about ten years exactly since I found out I was pregnant with Gideon and now, sitting here pregnant with our sixth, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the past decade. It has been a decade of giving up my body, my sleep, endless wiping, endless lunch-making, endless laundry and menial work. It has been a decade of daily good-doing. And it has often made me weary. But I also look up now and I’m sort of amazed at what God has brought from it all. I see the glimpses of harvest, of fruit budding on the trees, fed by a decade of simple, uninteresting daily good.
We can look back and look forward so we will not grow weary in doing good. The harvest is coming. The harvest is here. Do not give up.
“Let the children come to me,” he said and I wonder if he meant more. I wonder if it was not just a call, but a proclamation, an announcement of who was qualified to come: the unashamedly weak, the unabashedly needy, the artlessly vulnerable.
Yet, when we become mothers, these are things we repress in order to meet our call. A truth once known, but long forgotten becomes buried beneath the burdens we carry. It is wrapped up and sealed tight under layers of new identity: caretaker, home keeper, comforter, mediator, educator, schedule maker. Deep, deep down it goes each time as we gather our strength and flex to carry the laundry basket, the child, the emotional and mental weight of it all.
But if we hear the call, somehow we we must remember what was once familiar and now, feels so foreign. We can wear our weakness as a badge and not a scarlet letter. We can bring our need as as an offering and not a regret. We can cast our cares and not merely collect them. The truth long forgotten must be rediscovered, re-embraced, re-known.
When I became a mom, I thought often about how it was a calling to reflect God to my kids, but I think I’ve been surprised by how often that has been reversed. How often God has shown His heart for me through them.
These people see me at my absolute worst. They know me as I really am. Yet, they keep a short record of wrongs. They show me new mercies on new mornings. They quickly offer me grace when I ask for forgiveness no matter how many times I’ve failed.
They are determined to love me.
Almost every night before bed, Gideon hugs me and tells me I’m the best mom ever. Some nights I smile and say thank you. Some nights, it makes me almost cry because I feel like the farthest thing from the best mom ever. The love we feel we don’t deserve is the hardest to receive.
But then…real love is never about keeping score. Real love is about belonging. God calls us by name and says, “You’re mine.” He loves us simply because we’re His.
What a sweet gift it is to love and be loved by these kids. I’m so thankful they belong to me and I belong to them.
Happy Mother’s Day! May you feel loved and blessed today.
“No one is grading you.” Those words echoed through my head recently, making me stop and regard them somewhat suspiciously.
I always thrived on grades. From the day I was handed a flag to carry for earning my middle school team’s highest GPA, they came to define me and I suppose I welcomed the definition. I always wanted to prove myself. I looked forward to geometry tests (proofs are fun people). I became physically ill before cross country races because I felt so much pressure. Looking back now, I see the pressure came from no one but myself.
I’m beginning to see how that pressure has translated into adulthood. The floor I haven’t had time to mop seems a direct reflection of my failures. The days that I feel totally overwhelmed seem a direct assessment and condemnation of my abilities to manage life. “How do I stop being so hard on myself?” I voiced to my husband on just one of those days.
I tend to roll my eyes a little when people tell me to love myself or be kind to myself because I think, in general, an abundance, not a lack, of self-love is our problem. And yet…there’s something there, something of Jesus offering his easy yoke, something of him telling Martha to stop hustling and bustling and just sit with Him.
Jesus was tough on those who were blind to their failures and gentle with those who saw them all too clearly. For the latter, the gospel comes gently, like a mother who picks up a too-tired toddler to shush them to sleep. It means the pressure is off. The test is over or rather, someone else was tested in our place. Now we aim for excellence, not to earn, but in freedom, because we are already accepted and approved.
I don’t know why it’s so hard to believe, but I want to believe it more in 2023. I want, as Peter commended, to stand firm in the true grace of God which tells us we don’t have to earn rest. It tells us God is just as glorified in our rest as He is in our labors. Maybe even more…because the one who can rest is the one who has marinated their souls in the gospel so much they know they’ve got nothing to prove.
Maybe you’re like me. Maybe you also need to intentionally leave the colossal mess in the kitchen to go bask in the sunshine because who cares? No one is coming to inspect your kitchen. Maybe you need to hear it too.
I’ve been thinking about servanthood which may as well be a synonym for motherhood. The tasks of motherhood are tasks of service: making meals, refilling cups, cleaning spills, wiping butts, re-wiping the butts that were inadequately wiped. From morning to night, I am a servant. Too often though, I am a grumbling servant, a proud servant, a servant who doesn’t want to serve anymore.
Philippians 2 describes Jesus in three forms: God, man, and servant. As God, He had the right to demand to be served, yet He came as man so that He could serve us. He had every right to grasp, but instead, he surrendered. He had every right to demand, but instead, He gave. “Have this mind among you…” Paul says.
I’m praying I can become a more humble and joyful servant, but I’m also really thankful I don’t have to earn or prove anything. I’m thankful that the Gospel isn’t merely “Here’s Christ’s example. Go do it,” but “Here’s Christ’s righteousness. He did what you could never do for you.” I can never be the servant Jesus is, but I can pursue growth out of freedom and gratitude. We should want to serve better because Christ has served us…but we can also receive grace when we serve imperfectly because we have been so perfectly served by Him.
Writing a book is a funny thing because it becomes like your little shoulder angel, whispering in your ear, reminding you of all the fine words you wrote that you’re supposed to be also putting into action. Maybe God has a little chuckle watching me deal with the many opportunities I have to do so. Like, oh you wrote about sacrificial love? Here’s a 6 am wake up call, some poop handprints on the bathroom wall, and a vomit covered toddler. Enjoy.
It sounds stupid, but I’m often taken off guard when life is hard. I can be personally affronted by inconvenience. Do something hard and unpleasant? Surely, not ME. Maybe we never grow out of this childishness without a perspective shift…because if we believe our lives are fundamentally about us, then our daily difficulties seem out of place. If we think we’re the director and star of our own drama, we will be continuously perplexed when our storylines go awry.
While we’d like to think that our lives are self-made, scripture tells us that they are appointed to us. “Only let each person lead the life that the LORD has assigned to him, and to which God has called him” (1 Corinthians 7:17). Our lives and every day that makes up their sum, including its difficulties, has been assigned to us.
If we see this, if it dawns on us that perhaps we are not the stars of this show nor the authors of this story, but recipients of a part to play in God’s grand narrative, we might begin to see our daily difficulties differently, even as a gift. I’m not sure I can ever look at poop handprints and think, “What a lovely gift,” but I think at least, we could see such inconveniences as bitter medicine with a sweet purpose.
Every hard thing is meant to remind me that I am here on this earth to magnify Him and not the other way around. I can fight what He has assigned to me or submit myself to it, receiving the hard things as God-ordained and therefore, good. The toddler tantrum has been assigned to me. The poop handprints have been given. Though I might regularly pray, “Lord please let this cup pass from me”, the dishes and the laundry have apparently been appointed unto me for all my days under the sun. Yet I know from whom they come. I know who holds my lot and draws my boundary lines. The path He’s set out for me may include many things I’d rather leave out, but I know where it leads. To life. To joy. To pleasures evermore.
The Motherhood Marathon 