motherhood

Are you overwhelmed? Does your life feel impossible? Do you feel completely inadequate and incompetent for the task before you? Good! You may be in just the right place…to see God do the impossible!

I am very familiar with the feeling that my life is out of control, being a mother of many children! I don’t often get to attend special conferences at my church, but I love to listen to the CDs of them at home. I was listening to a CD of Lesley-Anne Leighton talk about her amazing adventures as a missionary. God would regularly do miracles for her as she stepped out in faith. For example, she was taken into custody by Chinese authorities (China is very hostile to the Gospel of Jesus). She was miraculously released after she started speaking to the men in Chinese…and she didn’t know how to speak Chinese! She would do training schools all around the world to teach people to live a supernatural life like hers. As I listened to her teaching on this CD, she said she would share with us her strategy for living such a life. That caught my attention and I listened carefully; so much so that I remember what she said 9 years later. Her strategy was simple; she would follow Jesus wherever he led! This meant that she would get in over her head and watch God do the miracles on her behalf.

A new thought began to dawn in my mind. This was a great strategy for a missionary, traveling to hostile and dangerous parts of the world. But I knew that motherhood was a dangerous and perilous journey as well. Mothers needed miracles just as much as missionaries did! I knew that I needed some! And Lesley-Anne had just told me that it was actually a good thing that I was in over my head…because that is the place where God moves! My courage began to rise.

I had felt in over my head since my second baby showed up and didn’t get the memo from his big sister on how to sleep. He would cry louder than I had ever heard anyone cry, and deprive me of my sleep and almost my sanity! He continued these nighttime disturbances even after I became pregnant with number three.

I had felt overwhelmed since I had three little children and a special needs baby who required many doctors’ appointments and special care. I had no one close by to help and my husband, Chris often traveled for work, being gone for days or weeks at a time.

I had felt overwhelmed when I had three little children, a special needs two-year old and a five-week old baby boy AND Chris and I had to pack up our home, drive cross-country (praying the whole way that I wouldn’t fall asleep at the wheel and kill us all!), and set up a new home in Pennsylvania.

I had felt overwhelmed since I had seven children, home schooled, and enrolled my special needs daughter in a therapy program that I was supposed to accomplish by myself, at home. The man in charge told me that Ashlyn’s therapy program would be fairly easy, only requiring 6 hours a day. I thought to myself, “How can I ever do that?” Yet I wanted to try, because I wanted her to be better so badly. I also felt that God had led me to this program for Ashlyn AND had led me to home school all the other children.

I would wake up at 5 am each morning, immediately feeling nervous about the coming day. My mind would instantly begin to churn with all I had to accomplish and the fact that it was nearly impossible to do so. Life felt like a test, and I would pass the test only if I could accomplish everything I my to-do list. But almost every night I would go to bed with tasks left undone and the feeling of failure. There were a few rare days that I finished everything and thought briefly that I had succeeded…only to look back over my day and realize that I had plowed over everything and everyone who stood in my way. My victory was meaningless, because I did it without love, and my children suffered.

Thinking on these past failures, I would go from being nervous to panicking!!! Lying in bed in the morning, trying to work up the courage to face my impossible day, I would pray.

“Oh, God! I want to love my children today! I want to do therapy with Ashlyn so she can be well! I want to do home school with my children so they will be smart! But I have so many other things I need to do! I should have been up hours ago! There is no way I can do this. This is IMPOSSIBLE! I am in WAY OVER MY HEAD!”

Then one day I was quiet enough to hear the Spirit’s still small voice.

“This day is not a test, it is a gift! I want you to open your eyes and see all the treasures I have hidden for you in this day. Let me bless you in the midst of your business. You are right, my child. Your life is impossible. I designed it that way. I never intended for you to live a safe, easy, comfortable life. I didn’t design you to merely do the possible. I am the God of the impossible, remember! I designed you to do the impossible through me! I can’t fully show my glory unless the situation is Impossible. All that I do through your life is changing eternity. So be at rest. Be at peace. I AM in control.”

That voice changes everything for me! It immediately tears the veil between my crazy, earthy life and the Holy of Holies. I can step out of the temporary and step into the eternal. I can step out of my failures and step into the finished work of Christ. My life takes on a while new significance when I realize that the Most Holy God wants to dwell with me and do miracles through me! And what could be more miraculous than living with so many children and having perfect peace!

Now we have eight children and a ninth baby that takes a lot of time and resources – a new business! I have so many things to do at home, and Chris has so many things to do at our sign shop. I try to help him at the shop and he tries to help me at home, all the while being mindful of our precious children. We are busy almost all of the time. What little “free” time we have is not really free. We are so selective about how we spend our time, trying fiercely to follow Jesus and no one else. There isn’t time and energy and devotion to waste on anything less! It is going to take a miracle to raise our children the way we should AND make our business successful. Both Chris and I are sure that we are in WAY OVER OUR HEADS! Yet we know that Jesus led us here and through him we are doing miracles.

I am so encouraged by Mark Batterson and what he wrote in The Circle Maker.“If you’ve never been overwhelmed by the impossibility of your plans, then your God is too small.”

So are you in over your head? If you got into this situation by following someone other than Jesus, start following him now and just see what he will do! If it was Jesus who got you into the crazy mess called your life, let your heart take courage! This is his specialty, doing miracles through little you! So relax, let go, and enjoy riding on his waves of grace…and expect signs and wonders to follow you.

I had such a Glorious Vision of Motherhood. I had such amazing dreams about child rearing. Dreams fueled by extensive reading.

Books about how to multiply your baby’s intelligence.

Books about how to make your child physically superb.

Books about how to build strong immune systems with a traditional, whole foods diet.

Books about how to foster a lifetime love of learning by homeschooling and employing each child’s individual learning style.

Books about how to raise happy, obedient children.

And many, many more.

I was totally confident that I could achieve these goals with my knowledge and ability. Plus God gave me these children, so he would make this glorious vision of perfection come to pass to be a beacon to the world…wouldn’t he?

An honest evaluation of my life and my children revealed to me that I have failed on every point with every child. Every one of those dreams of child rearing has died…my Glorious Vision of Motherhood obliterated.

And what is left in the ashes of total defeat? Dirty, messy, disobedient children who are neither geniuses nor prodigies, neither physically superb nor perfectly healthy. They are many times rude, disrespectful, average, and markedly below average. They often hate school and love soda. And do I blame them? No, I blame myself totally and completely because I am the Mother and I have failed.

“God,” I ask, “How can I move forward?”

He answers in the ancient verses of Isaiah 46:6,7.

“Those who lavish gold from the purse, and weigh out silver in the scales – they hire a goldsmith, who makes it into a god; Then they fall down and worship! They lift it to their shoulders, they carry it, they set it in its place, and it stands there; It cannot move from its place.”

What if I had all the time and money to carry out all the good advice in all of those books? What if I had the wealth and the gold to hire a goldsmith to create for me the perfect child? Beautifully carved, perfectly painted. It would never get dirty or have a runny nose. It would never pee in its bed, poop in its underwear, or throw up on the couch. It would never be rude or illicit dirty looks from old ladies in grocery stores. It would never scream at me and backtalk. I wouldn’t have to worry about it falling out of a tree and breaking its perfect neck. I wouldn’t have to prescreen every TV show it watches in order to protect its pristine mind. I wouldn’t have to constantly be concerned about its schooling or properly stimulating its mind. I wouldn’t have to wonder, during those moments of eerie silence, what they were destroying or who they were torturing. I could be at peace knowing my perfect child was still sitting there…perfect. I could lift them up on my shoulder and show the world with no shame. Look everyone! My stunning, marvelous child! Forever and perpetually perfect and unchanging! Yet cold and hard and lifeless. No breath, no life, no will, no heart, no desires, no sin…no love.

DEAR GOD!!! My dream for my children is an idol! A gaudy idol with eternally unblinking eyes. That sickening chill fills my soul as I realize – I must cast that idol down, see it smash into a million pieces at my feet and ask for forgiveness.

I don’t want idols! I want children. I want the grimy, rosy cheek warm against mine. I want the smell of dirt and sweat as I embrace them. I want the tornadoes of chaos creating one mess after another. I want the inappropriate thoughts blurted out as inappropriate words. I want to bear their disrespect for everything I hold dear. I want to see them struggle and sin and fall…because I get to see them rise again. We all fall short and miss the mark, and so will my children. When they do fall, it will not be my fault. I get to love them and pray and love them some more.

My new dream for motherhood is immerging like the first rays of the dawn. I am not sure what it will look like at midday, but I imagine it something like this.

Brilliant, dazzling, blinding, sparking jewels of worth beyond all estimation…peaking out bit by bit from cracked and broken jars of clay.

2 Corinthians 4:7

“Our bodies are made of clay, yet we have the treasure of the Good News in them.” God’s Word

“But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” NRS

Whew! How light I feel without carrying those heavy idols around. Now I can let God carry me (Is 46:3,4). He gave my all of these wild children, so I think I will let him carry them too! I am a much better mother without the false Glorious Vision of Motherhood. Now I am free to laugh and enjoy…the imperfection of it all!