Kids. At their mention, emotions range from the far ends.
I know that some out there feel strangled by their desires for a child. As if those longings will never be fulfilled. While others sit by a hospital bed, clinging to the hope of a miracle. I also know mamas who lay awake at night desperate for their own to turn back to the Lord.
Our heart does a deep thing when it comes to parenthood. The ache can paralyze. So to my sweet readers who live with stinging tears these days, I pray his tender mercies afresh as you rest in his eternally faithful hands.
He is sovereign.
His love motivates his movement.
He sees, knows, and continually works.
Nothing is outside of his ability to transform.
Nothing is at the mercy of random chance.
He. is. God. Begin there.
I haven’t personally walked those dark valleys with my kids — not yet anyway. But I am a mommy to three. My heart exploded with that mama-love after birthing my first baby. A love that cannot be fully expressed with mere words.
Yet this very love came bearing a gift for which I wasn’t quite prepared. The gift of self-sacrifice. Mommyhood stretches me in every. possible. way. It takes my emotions to new heights and my failures to new lows, continually revealing the depths of my depravity.
And often it’s the daily chatter of life that gets my mind off focus. The spilled orange juice on my just-mopped-floor-that-I-hadn’t-mopped-in-like-three-months. Or the whining that feels like a bug has bore a hole in my brain. (Me? Exaggerate?) The moments that feel as if I’m drowning in requests. It’s the dailiness of life that tests me.
So in the midst of crushed goldfish crackers that seem to be a characteristic of our vehicle, I have to choose the true things to think upon regarding my kids. Otherwise, it just ain’t pretty.
They are needy for truth. And I’m chosen to pour into them in the midst of the messy. They will fall, for they are like me — human and broken apart from their Maker’s grace. But my role is simply put, though often strenuously lived out: point them to him.
Every place in them that rebels again reveals their gaping need for a redeemer. Every selfish word and disrespectful glare displays a heart still in process. Just like mine.
So I continually ask to see them as he sees them, apart from my controlling agenda. I want to see their soul and respond as he would, passing that baton of faith. And when I fail — which I do more than I like to admit — I trust in his great grace that surpasses my human efforts and draws them to himself in spite of me.
Today’s thought-life challenge:
- Ask the Lord to reveal any thoughts about your children (or desired children) that could be characterized as fear, worry, or lies.
- Spend some time writing down truths that could counteract those debilitating thoughts.
- Meditate on those true things — repeat them silently, declare them verbally, choose to believe them in the moments.
Fill me, Lord…
What true thoughts do you choose (or want to choose) to think upon in regards to your own kids?
Thank you for this truth-filled post! Sweet hugs, friend!
Thanks, Rebecca. 🙂
” It takes my emotions to new heights and my failures to new lows, continually revealing the depths of my depravity.”
Motherhood has been THE HARDEST THING I have ever “done”. I continually feel like a failure, and wonder if it will ever get easier…
But, I KNOW that God is the one in control. He is the one raising my children, despite my failures. He will use my strengths and weaknesses to shape them. I do pray, like you, that even through my failures I can point them to Him. They need Jesus. Mommy needs Jesus, too.
Loving this series!
Oh girlfriend, I know what you mean. Motherhood has stretched me further than I thought I could be stretched. And I am only 7 years in. Yikes. But God is so faithful, in spite of me. Blessings to you!
The Lord led me right to these words of yours today, as I’m in a season of really struggling to let go of my need to control and my fears and my overwhelmed heart, as a mom who shares custody with a non-believer, a mom of a daughter who loves the Lord and also is is going into these teen years when she is pressing against the safe fences I’ve built around her life, and I’m really filled with fears so often and feel so out of my element so often, and your words make me smile as the Lord reminds me that she is His, that I also am His, and that many mamas are walking this out with me. I am praying today for all of us mamas whose hearts are burdened to be refreshed by the Holy Spirit and filled with peace and that we’d remember that His grace is sufficient and this all is just one of many seasons…