Yesterday being Mother's Day, me being a mom and a having a mom and knowing moms and women who long to be moms and/or grieve the loss of their children, it was a day full of thoughts turned prayers.
Yesterday also being the last Sunday in a series on marriage at my church, and me being married and knowing firsthand the unique kinds of trials marriage brings, it was a day of reflection turned worship.
About a week ago I read Psalm 27 and it grabbed me. I've been mulling it over ever since. One particular verse has me thinking about my one thing.
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.
What's the one thing I am asking God for and seeking after? One thing. Mostly its been for my marriage. Or my kids. The two things yesterday hit on. When I read Psalm 27 I hear the writer exclaiming that in the midst of fearful troubles and rejections, his one thing was a triune request: To be in God's presence all his life, to see the beauty of God and to be able to talk with God and may requests of him. If I'm honest at first reading I feel like that's just out of reach. How can I say my one thing is all about God when my kids are struggling and I'm exhausted and my marriage is so troubled? How could the Psalmist say this when danger and fears and rejection by his own parents surrounded him?
As I listened yesterday to the preaching of the message that God has ransomed us from slavery to sin and idolatry, like Hosea ransomed Gomer, the mental image of the Son of God crying out, "I buy you back! I buy you with my own life!" while I was shamefully sold-out to sin flashed through my mind. I heard 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body."
And then Psalm 27 started making more sense. There's only one thing I really need in the midst of fears and suffering: Christ. If he didn't buy me back to God I would never be able to run to him as a refuge. I wouldn't be able be in his presence daily or see his endless beauty or talk with him and seek his answer.
In the midst of parenting trials and marriage troubles, where fears and the pain of betrayal and rejection and sins threaten to destroy, the one thing I need more than anything is Christ. And when I lift my eyes off this storm around me and believe the promise that he his with me, and dwell on the beauty of his glory, and seek his face and his counsel, everything is set right. The storm may rage, but with the psalmist I can say:
I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
I read a post of Facebook the other day where a mom was telling her adult kids what she really wanted for Mother's Day. In short: Time with them. I agree. Being a mom myself I feel the exact same way. But since we're far apart and don't spend as much time together as we both would like as moms, I wanted to take a minute to tell you, and the world just a few of the reasons I'm so thankful that God made you my mom.
#1 Your songs.
Now that I'm a grown up and have spent years pursuing my own walk with the God of the Bible, I realize there are a lot of messages I swallowed growing up that weren't so Biblical. Some things taught as truth were just misunderstood. Some were mis-taught. Enter grace. And hymns. No matter what I learned about God and life that wasn't so right growing up, what I learned right I heard in your singing. When you sang the words, "I need thee every hour..." you taught me dependence upon the grace found in Christ. When you cried out in song around the house, "Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, help me stand." You taught me to cry to God and not pout to myself. When I heard you worship at bedtime, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me..." You taught me to awe at the salvation found in Jesus. Your singing planted truth in my soul mom. And now it has sprouted and grown into it's very own tree, planted by the same streams of water out of which my soul sings with you, "And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own. And the joy we share as we tarry there. None other, has ever known."
#2 Your brokenness
Mom, honestly I used to wish you weren't broken. I used to wish, with you, we had a neat, tidy, healthy family. I wanted a yellow house with a picket fence, two happy healthy parents and siblings who got along too. Who doesn't want that? But brokenness has come upon us all. Even those I thought had that picture perfect family. And it's through the brokenness in your life that I have learned to see God's miraculous way of making beauty out of ashes. I used to be angry with God for the brokenness I saw everywhere and in my own life. But the beautiful masterpiece God paints by taking the very cracked up thoughts and emotions, bodies and relationships we all live with everyday and out of them painting a whole new Christ-imaging life makes the beauty of that Norman Rockwell life I had in my head look like a 5 year old's water color. God has painted Christ-exalting majesty and glory out of your broken life mom. Christ in you is beautiful! Through you Christ has shown himself to me as the Great Physician who has come not for the well, but the sick, like me. Through you, he has made me to know him as the great bearer of burdens. Because you have turned to Him, time and time again, I have learned to see myself and others as broken people in desperate need of the love of Christ.
#3 Your creativity
Paper dolls cut out of any piece of cardboard or paper on hand. Marbles and Jax. Stories that should be written down and printed as captivating children's books. Biscuits to die for. Your interest in our lives and your creativity and handiwork drew us as children to you. Your creative, happy, liveliness was Jesus in you causing the little children to come to him. And he is still at work in you drawing your grandchildren. God has given you the gift of touching the hearts of young children mom. Your love of life and interest in investing in the young souls around you has forever changed the course of many lives for God's glory.
#4 Your diversity
In a small town where everyone was a shade of pale and most people spoke red-neck English, you were a wise woman with a world-wide awareness and a vision for honoring the diversity of God's people in every tongue, tribe and nation. Before we could even speak, you were hanging cut out magazine images of babies with different skin-tones on the wall next to our crib. When Cabbage-Patch dolls were all the rage, you bought your white, freckle-faced children black Cabbage-Patch dolls. When people of darker pigment came into our our town and didn't speak much English, you welcomed them into our home and learned to make tortillas from scratch with them. In a culture that was ignorant to it's xenophobia, you were planting the truth that in God's world there are peoples of all cultures, pigments and languages. And that's a beautiful thing!
A Woman To Be Praised!
That's only four reasons out of many for why I thank God every day that he made you my mom! I celebrate you mom. I want to pass onto my children the gifts you've given me. Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman like you mom, who is in awe of Christ Jesus our Lord, is worthy to be praised for generations to come! May God bless the work of your hands mom!
I posted a little blurb on Facebook this morning regarding my disappointing Mother's Day and shared the priceless card my 11 year old son gave me this morning.
He didn't write it after feeling bad about yesterday. I hadn't laid into him or his brother for the grief they gave me yesterday. He simply ran into the card he had made at school, probably at the prompting of his teacher, while cleaning out his binder in getting ready for today's school day. It wasn't a Hallmark moment. It was a, "Oh, yeah, mom, here. I forgot to give this to you yesterday," moment as he rushed downstairs to play for a few minutes before school.
His words on the card are priceless. The flowers he drew I'm sure came out of a desire to give me something he knew I really wanted. (He's a great artist and draws great war scenes and I'm always asking him to draw me something nice for a change, like flowers. His response is usually, "Mom! Boys don't draw flowers!") I'll treasure the card as long as I live and my boys will continue to be my heart walking around outside my body. But the most priceless thing about yesterday and this morning was not the card or the Happy Mother's Day sentiments. The reality check I got this morning while reading my Bible was the most satisfying treasure of all!
"Arise, O Lord!... Deliver my soul... from men of the world whose portion is in this life. You fill their womb with treasure, they are satisfied with children, and they leave their abundance to their infants. As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness, when I awake, I shall be satisfied with your likeness." - excerpts from Psalm 17:13,14,15
Psalm 127 says:
Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.
God gives children. They are a treasure. They are a gift from God to be embraced as blessings and riches. So what's with Psalm 17?
As much as children are a treasure from the womb and gift from God, they cannot satisfy the mom, or dad, who has been awakened to the treasure of Christ and being made like him.
It is a total gift to be a mom. It is one of my greatest joys. But it is also a source of great sorrow, probably one of the greatest sorrows. And I'm glad. I'm glad there are disappointing Mother's Days and half-hearted givings of sentimental words. (Not that my son's words were half-hearted. I believe they were very sincere.) I'm glad because the painful things of motherhood give me pause. They cause me to stop and think, "Am I merely a woman of the world, satisfied with children? Or am I a woman of God, thankful for children, treasuring them as a gift and a stewardship, but satisfied only in the glorious promise of seeing my Lord face to face... and not in shame and fear, but in righteousness? To actually possess Christ's righteousness. To really be like Him! Then, oh then. Then and only then will I be fully satisfied.
Motherhood is an opportunity to taste and see that the LORD, not just having children, is good.
May our children see that our hope for satisfaction is in Christ and not feel the unbearable weight of having to be our satisfaction. May they look to us as we look to Christ.
Mother's day approaches and I find myself prayerfully desiring to magnify Christ with my motherhood, and to finish the work He's given me to do in bringing up my sons in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I also find myself thanking God for the mother He gave me and noticing women and mothers all around me, praying that they would find their worth in Christ and thereby truly fulfill their call to nurse and train others up in His ways. And I find myself rejoicing in the beauty of adoption as I get to see my God set the fatherless in the family of my sister and her husband and watch as He makes a barren woman the happy mother of children.
Mothering is a reflection of our great God and when we walk in the grace of Christ's life working in and through us, our mothering becomes a monument built up for the glory of God.
If you are a mom, God has given you a house to build for Him.
Oh how I'm preaching to myself here!
It's not an unnoticed work when its done unto the Lord. He sees. He cares. He gently leads. Just as He gave Leah and Rachel the ministry of building the house of Israel for Him, by giving their lives to raising 12 sons, He has given you and me the ministry of building a home that reflects His glory by giving our lives to raising our kids in His ways. That's not just telling them His ways (though it is that too), but raising them IN His ways.
He's given us the ministry of bringing up children IN an environment of HIS ways. That means we must be dying to self and following Christ daily. It means we give them a home where they hear prayer and praise, wisdom and kindness from our lips and our actions. It means they see us respecting their father (whether we're married or divorced). It means they see us reaching out to others in Jesus' name, loving His word and trusting in His promise of new life.
We have such a great calling! It's great and it's by the grace of God that we get to partake of some of His story as moms!
Lately the Spirit has been speaking these things to me:
1. Don't try to extract the poison, the flesh, the "tares" from them, just pour the good, the pure milk, the clean water of God's word into them. This means I must stop fretting over every evidence of the sinful, fleshly nature I see in them, trying to pull out every weed and drop of poison, but rather I must faithfully water them with the word and bring them up in a life of God's good ways. This doesn't mean I don't discipline them, it just means I don't tailor a heavy yoke of trying to strain out every bit of flesh I see, rather I let God's law (God's word) be their teacher and boundaries. Nor does this mean that I don't care about the sinful, fleshly tendencies I see in them. It just means I cast all those cares upon the Lord, intercede for them, and trust in God's promise which is stronger than their nature.
2. Building healthy children begins with a friendship with their father. This means that just as my sons were physically born because I united myself with my husband (in the intimate bond of friendship God made for husband's and wives to enjoy), just as it was the tool through which God brought two new lives into this world, it is the tool through which He builds up healthy lives in them. And in spirit, as I intimately bond with Christ in prayer and praise, new life is in me and I am able to build up, not suck the life out of, my husband and children. More important than any specific teaching or action is that I am satisfied in Christ, that I do all I do as unto Him, and that display love and respect to my husband before my kids.
3. Whatever you want for your children, you have to be first. I think that's self-explanatory. Specifically the Spirit is leading me to lead my kids into a life of fearing God not man by conquering my own tendency to fear man. And the sure-fire way to destroy the fear of man is to preach and serve Christ. So I am praying for and looking for ways to, in my children's presence, preach Christ and serve Christ to their peers and the people I encounter in a day. One of the ways that I've begun to do this is by visiting my son at lunchtime at his school and giving thanks to God with him and his friends. He's so afraid of what his friends will think of him because he doesn't see them pray, but I pray that seeing me pray in the midst of them, without fear, will blaze a trail of confidence in God (fearing God) rather than a false confidence in man.
4. Teaching them will draw others to Christ. Jesus pointed out that He was here to feed His children (referring to Israel, specifically His 12) and when the gentiles came to receive from Him, He said things like, "Why should I give the food meant for the children to the dogs?" He wasn't being mean. He was doing the work His Father gave Him to do rather than the work that men wanted Him to do. But in doing so He wasn't merciless to those outside of the house of Israel. In fact in His commitment to teach His 12, using every encounter to set them examples and speak words that would lead and guide them, He often involved Gentiles who were saved while Christ taught His twelve through them.
I long for the people around me to know Christ, the people "out there", yet I feel restrained and powerless to reach them. God has a work for me to do even though I see a lot of work "out there" that I could do. Yet, even so, God is powerful, and in doing the work of teaching my sons His ways and setting examples for them to follow, I get to reach out to the "others" in my life. It's requiring prayer and a sensitivity to His Spirit, and a willingness to submit to His will and turn from my plans when they may not be His.
5. Keep fighting for your kids in prayer... God is! For the past several weeks I've been meeting with two other women in my area for a Moms In Touch International (MITI) meeting once a week. We get together and we pray for about an hour for our kids, they're friends, and their schools. It's awesome!
Last night, on the way to the store, I caught a piece of a speaker speaking to a conference of MITI. He talked about how his mom (the founder of MITI) faithfully clung to God's word and never let God forget about her son though he strayed from the Lord. My heart was so touched. My sons are only 6 and 4 and yet I already feel them slipping from my grasp. So then, rather than trying to cling to them, I must cling to God's word and lift them up in my hands to God, and not grow weary in interceding for them.
The speaker gave this scripture and I know it's for me to take in praying for my kids in the power of God:
...the Lord your God Himself fights for you... Deuteronomy 3:22
Lately I've grown weary, overwhelmed with what I see circumstancially, and what I know about my sinful nature. I've been hearing the accusations of the enemy, and the condemnation he throws my way, and I've cowered in weeping. But the Spirit has been a faithful friend to lift my head and remind me of the way to overcome my accuser and to help me remember the promise of God's word which is more true than what I see.
May the Lord continue to help me in my weakness, to help each of us in our desire to build up a home that brings Him glory, and to intercede for our children without loosing heart.
Happy Mother's Day mom and all you moms!
Related:
Here's that wonderful "Invisible Woman" video. I never get tired of watching it! :)
