Mother, Give Yourself Away

I can’t remember a time when women were more determined to find themselves. Women of the world are searching for meaning, for satisfaction, happiness, fulfillment, and a sense of feeling comfortable in their own skin. The joys of motherhood have taken a far back seat to the trials of motherhood. Every other comment, video, and personal update on social media seems to be women pointing out all of the ways that motherhood is hard. They’re “being authentic.” But in many ways the greater conversation about being a mother, even in the Christian realm, has turned from reflecting on the goodness of God to dwelling on the sacrifices required to obsessing about whether we’re happy enough.

So I’m just writing this as a reminder to myself and to all of the moms out there who profess Christ. We can easily spend all day on social media where we will absorb every godless thought about being a mom. We can absolutely drown in the type of soul searching that leaves us empty and unhappy and looking for reasons to resent all the ways that we’re called to serve and care for our children. We can take advice from people who not only don’t live according to Scripture, but who laugh at it. We can take in everything that people who have a hopeless worldview want to tell us about how to think and feel.

At the end of a day like that, we will look at our children as inconveniences. We’ll look at them as things, not souls. Things that are holding us back, making life hard, making us angry, sad, lonely, unfulfilled. If we have enough days like this, it will make us despise our life. It will make us hate our children, even while we say we love them. It will make us waste years of our lives feeling miserable and sorry for ourselves, longing for something, anything other than this life. This is where it all leads, friends. It’s inevitable. We aren’t just “doom-scrolling.” We’re changing the way that our brains work. We’re hardening our own hearts against God’s truth. We’re throwing joy away with both hands.

I would invite us all to engage in a different type of soul searching. Let’s look into our own heart, mind, and spirit, searching for the ways that our spiritual DNA has been altered by the God haters who have our ear. Let’s turn back to God’s word as our source of life and godliness. There we see that true satisfaction and fulfillment come from giving our entire lives away for the sake of the gospel. We see that the last are always first in God’s kingdom. We see that those who put themselves in the place of honor at the king’s feast will be asked to move so that someone lower can sit there. We remember that humility is beautiful and grabbing desperately to hold all we can get for ourselves is so ugly and empty and dissatisfying.

We see that children are a gift from God, and that they are individual souls who have their own relationship with Him, who are just as human and just as valuable as any person He ever made. They aren’t roadblocks that keep us from going where we ought to be going. They are our path to greater dependence on God, to the most important gospel mission of our lifetime, to all the most meaningful parts of our short time on earth, to sanctification in all of its forms, and to deep, abiding, glorious faith in the God who entrusted them to us.

Happiness comes and goes. The joy of the Lord is different. It co-exists with pain, with struggle, with the most humbling moments of our lives. In fact, when we abide in Him, joy often comes to the forefront at the very worst moments, and many of those worst moments will happen while a child lays sick in a bed, screams defiantly in our faces, crumbles pitifully under the pressures of a day as a kid in a harsh world. Joy can still be the theme, because God has so much to show us about who He is when we turn off the hopeless chatter from the outside world and sit with His truth wrapped around us like a quilt that granny made.

Mothers, give yourselves away, without reservation. It’s a phase of life, and then it’s over, and you’ll never, ever regret giving yourself fully to your children in the short time that you have them. Reject the nonsense of this world that tells you this is not enough for you. Turn off the noise. Tune in to the God of all who gave these children to you, and give and give and give and give some more. Selfless love and peace go hand in hand. You can stop searching now. He has you right where you need to be.