Tag: religion

How to be the Best Mom

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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.

Do Not Grow Weary

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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.

We Are Children Too

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“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.

That we are children too.

Happy Mother’s Day!

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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.

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 “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.

No one is grading you.

Receiving the Appointed Bitter Gifts of God

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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.

For the Unholy Mother

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I thought I would be holier by now.

I thought surely eight years of motherhood would turn me into a June Cleaver who smiles beatifically through the travails of raising children. I wake up with the resolve to be more like this, but somewhere between the morning oatmeal smeared on the table and the fiftieth exclamation of, “He hit me!” My resolve crumbles.

God’s love is described as steadfast, like the waves that relentlessly hit the shore. My love often feels fickle, pulled back and forth by a moody, unpredictable tide. I want to grow to be more like Him, more steadfast, but instead I feel like I’m just “fast.” Fast to anger. Fast to grumbling.

But maybe, that’s a big part of becoming holier: first seeing how unholy you are. Maybe the work of sanctification in motherhood is seeing just how wide the chasm between you and righteousness really is. We are not just a little worse than God. We are so very human while He is completely “other”, in a category of holiness we could never even come close to achieving on our own.

“If you O LORD should mark iniquities, O LORD, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.”

Salvations means God has descended down into our depths and hauled us back up to stand in the field of grace. It’s as simple as that and yet, there’s tension here. Grace is free, but not cheap. We are welcomed to its throne, but we must not tread flippantly on holy ground.

I thought I would be holier by now.

But maybe, the holiest person is the one bowed down to the dust, the one who reaches for the cup of salvation with trembling hands, knowing their only hope of receiving it is to plead the merits of another.

Reverence and redemption. Mourning and joy. Forgiveness and fear. How closely are they intertwined.

God’s Love is Under the High Chair. A Poem.

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God’s love is under the high chair

The one who stoops down will find it

She condescends, descends into a lowly realm 

to scrub dried applesauce and mystery goo 

As she bends to peel spaghetti noodles,

noodle by noodle she discovers

God’s love is under the high chair

For before her, there was another 

who condescended, descended into a lowly realm 

to cleanse hearts and to redeem

Now, there is no job too low, no work too humble because 

God’s love is under the high chair

Motherhood Musings on Juggling and Struggling

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“Struggling isn’t failing.” I stop and say the words out loud to myself as I’m cleaning up the kitchen. 

My mind feels chaotic as the many things I need to accomplish for the day come at me like missiles, missiles that circle back around every few minutes to land again. Get my son to piano lessons. Finish school for the day. Shower. Maybe. Schedule that appointment. Call about getting the baby’s shots up to date. Put on makeup before my doctor’s appointment so I don’t look like a cast member of The Walking Dead. Everyone needs baths…and their nails cut. Why are there so many fingernails that insist on growing?

The chaos in my mind is mirrored by the chaos in my house. There are crayons. Everywhere. In the corners of the kitchen. By the stairs. I’m convinced they’re multiplying. Dress up has been discarded on the floor. Magnet blocks all over the living room. There are mac n cheese noodles stuck to the floor under the three-year-old’s chair. The lid to the coffee creamer wasn’t shut when I shook it and it spilled everywhere in front of the refrigerator. It is now a giant sticky spot that is collecting dirt and hair and who knows what else. I need to mop…I need to vacuum…I need a maid. 

It’s too much. There’s not enough time. Not enough energy. Not enough of me.

I am struggling. And it feels like failing. 

I’ve never been sure if I should call myself a perfectionist. My disorganized drawers would suggest no, but the meltdown I had after my first B would suggest yes. Sometimes, less than perfect doesn’t bother me, but others, it feels devastating.

Why is it so devastating? I’ve been trying to figure that out. I think ultimately it’s because it means that I am lacking. Lacking means deficiency and deficiency means failure. That is the path my mind naturally takes and that is why I find myself talking to myself in the kitchen, trying to take the thoughts out and examine them to see where I’ve gone wrong. 

What if the lacking was supposed to lead me somewhere else? To someone else?

We are uncomfortable with our limits. We balk at the reality that we only stretch so far before we break. My struggling feels like failure, but it’s actually just a reminder that I am a finite being, bound by time and space and the ways God has made me. It’s actually just God telling me I am not enough and this is a good thing to remember because it points me to the One who is. He exposes weakness not in condemnation, but love. He gives me more than I can handle so that He can give me more of Himself. 

The struggle is where He meets us. It’s where He pries our battered, ruined self-sufficiency from our hands and says, “I have something better.” 

“Struggling isn’t failing,” I say again. “It’s a gift.”

“She is clothed with strength and dignity.” And also probably armed with wipes and coffee…

Photo cred: my 3 yr old

The Israelites, Covid-19, and Our Greatest Battle

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On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand…

These words comforted my soul as we sang them with our church body via live stream this morning. We are studying the book of Daniel and a message on Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego reminded me that God is with us in trial. My faith was bolstered, my heart uplifted.

Then I looked at the news.

I’d say you’d have to be living under a rock to not know what’s going on with covid-19, but actually, we are all living under a rock because of covid-19. Every day feels a little bit like groundhog day. Every day we wake up, stay inside, and wonder when this nightmare will end. Then we repeat.

Trying to even just process the state of the world is difficult. It’s hard to even quite wrap our minds around how our lives have been upended in just a matter of weeks. This morning as I cranked up the worship music in an attempt to calm my heart, I began to think about the Israelites in Exodus.

God delivered them from the slavery and oppression of Pharaoh. He passed over them when they hid behind the blood of a lamb. He miraculously divided the sea so they could walk through it. And He assured them that He would lead them into the Promised land.

They knew their past. They knew their promised future. And yet, they hovered in the uncertainty of the in-between, a desert space filled with great enemies and dangers.

We have much in common with them. God has delivered us from the slavery of sin. He has passed over us because we are covered by the blood of the Lamb. He has done amazing things in our lives and never failed to be faithful. He has promised to lead us into the Eternal Promised Land where death will be no more and sorrow and sighing will cease.

We know our past. We know our promised future. And yet, we hover here in the uncertainty of the in-between, a desert space filled with great enemies and dangers.

Like the Israelites, our greatest battle in these days is the battle for faith over fear, the battle for trust over grasping. Like them, we face many temptations. We are tempted to turn to idols when God seems absent and we don’t understand what He’s doing. We are tempted to worry about tomorrow, hoarding “manna” in a vain attempt to make ourselves feel secure. We are tempted to run in fear when we hear reports of giants in the land.

Covid-19 is a giant that looms large and seems unconquerable. The battle for faith as we face this giant is a daily one.

Today, I will not trust in myself, in government, in doctors. Today, I will trust in the Lord

Today, I will not worry about tomorrow or the days after. I will look to the Lord to provide the resources, grace, and strength I need for this day.

Today, I will not give in to fear when I hear reports of growing threats and danger. I will lift my eyes to the One who rules over all. 

I’d be lying if I told you’d I’ve been winning this battle every day of this global crisis. My faith is weak and fickle, just like the Israelites, but God is staunchly faithful to me and all who are called by His name, just like He was to the Israelites.

And thankfully, the battle for faith is never a battle we fight on our own. He knows how we are formed. He remembers that we are dust. He knows we could never win this battle by ourselves. So He fights it with us. When our hearts begin to tremble with fear, His Spirit leads us back to faith just as a good shepherd leads a weary sheep to water. Again and again and again.

I don’t like feeling like my life is out of my control, but actually, it’s always out of my control whether I “feel” it or not. However, it is never out of His. It makes me uncomfortable that I have no idea what the future holds, but it gives me hope that I know the One who holds it. Today, I will fight the battle for faith in Him. Tomorrow, He will help me do it again.

God has delivered us from sin and promised to deliver us to that eternal shore. He will surely lead us through the uncertainty of the in-between. He is in our midst. He will help us when morning dawns. The LORD of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress.

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