He is Strong Enough

Sometimes I get homesick for my mother in the kitchen on summer mornings, drinking her coffee and making muffins in her bathrobe. I remember the sights and sounds of those lazy mornings when I was a kid: the oven door opening and closing, the muffled chatter of talk shows on the television, that particularly peaceful way that light streams into your bedroom on a morning when you’re a kid who has no place to be.

I don’t remember having a care in the world on those mornings. I had no teachers to please, no pressure to perform or to behave in certain ways. On a summer day in our home in the country, my only job was really to be myself.

Once I became a mother, I realized that there was a reason I had no worries waking up on a sunny morning in June. It’s because my mom was carrying all of the cares of the world for me. I was happily oblivious to the many burdens that plagued her thoughts as they do all mothers, and I miss those days, when my selfless mom shouldered all of the world so that I could wake up in total peace.

Now I have been a mother for 21 years, and I struggle to carry the burdens of four children on these two shoulders. I think back and wonder how my wonderful mom did it. And then I remember that she had a Savior who is in the business of carrying burdens–One who invited the weary and heavy-laden to come to Him for rest. It means that mothers can stop straining under a load of worries and what ifs and what nows. We can trust Jesus with all of the things that weigh us down in a world that wants to add rocks to our backpacks at every turn.

I may never be able to experience one of those peaceful summer wake-ups in my childhood room again, but I can wake up with true peace in my heart tomorrow, not because my precious bathrobed mother is in the next room, but because my Savior is right next to me, carrying everything. He is strong. He is faithful. His back never gets tired, and his arms never grow weary. The mothers who carry the burdens of life the best are the ones who carry them the least, handing them to Jesus instead. What a relief. What a love. What a Savior.