“But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” ~Matt. 6:3-4
“Jesus’s rationale is that in secret, when unnoticed by the gaze of others, we remain beneath the gaze of our Father, who sees in us what no one else does. To have no praise but that which comes from the God who sees and vindicates us is a reward that, for Jesus, outmatches any competing trophy or praise.…We were meant to live beneath the gaze of our Creator for his glory and freed from seeking fame from others.” ~Zach Eswine
What do our mothering fears have in common? They are all in our imagination. Our fertile minds generate countless scenarios whereby one calamity or another befalls our children: What if my son rebels when he hits the teenage years? What if my daughter doesn’t want to be my friend when she grows up? What if my son gets in a car accident? What if my daughter is diagnosed with leukemia?
After thirty-eight years of mothering, I’ve discovered that most of the bad things I imagined never actually came true. But there have been other trials—ones I never anticipated.
That’s why Elisabeth Elliot’s wise advice has been invaluable to me in fighting fear: “There is no grace for your imagination.”
God does not sprinkle grace over every path my fear takes. He does not rush in with support and encouragement for every doomsday scenario I can imagine.
No, instead He warns me to stay off those paths: “Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil” (Ps. 37:8).
There is no grace for our imagination. That’s why our fearful imaginings produce bad fruit: anxiety, lack of joy, futile attempts to control.
There is no grace for our imagination. But God does promise sufficient, abundant grace for every real moment of our lives. That’s why the Proverbs 31 woman can “laugh at the future in contrast with being worried or fearful about it” (ESV Study Bible note on Pr. 31:25)
There is no grace for our imagination. But there will be grace for our mothering future, the moment it arrives.
There is not grace for our imagination. But there is grace for today’s mothering trials. Not tomorrow’s imaginary trouble or next year’s envisaged problems. Just for today.
That’s why Jesus tells us: “[D]o not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matt. 6:34)
Moms of all people know this to be true: each day really does have sufficient trouble without adding tomorrow’s worries!
But for today’s sufficient trouble there is God’s more-than-sufficient grace: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).
“As your days” it says in Deuteronomy, “so shall your strength be” (33:25).
What’s more, for the Christian mother, goodness and mercy are behind every moment of today’s trouble. Our trouble isn’t meaningless. God is pursuing us with goodness and mercy today and all the days of our lives (Ps. 23:6).
“Courage, dear friend” encourages Charles Spurgeon, “The Lord, the ever-merciful, has appointed every moment of sorrow and pang of suffering. If He ordains the number ten, it can never rise to eleven, nor should you desire that it shrink to nine” (emphasis mine).
God is busy working today’s mothering trouble for our good. So do not worry about tomorrow but look to Him today.
Our mothering fears are conceived with our children. We see two little blue lines, and we are tempted to worry. We worry about eating something bad, lifting something heavy, sleeping in the wrong position.
Then our baby is born, and we fret about her life outside the womb—her eating, sleeping, talking, walking, developmental progress.
Our child starts school and we fear he will never finish. Will he make friends, make good grades, make something of himself? No sooner does high school start and we begin to worry about college.
We worry about our children’s health, their education, their friends, and above all, the state of their souls.
But once our children leave home, get a job, get married—then we can stop worrying, right?
Not so fast. Instead of leaving with our children, new worries move in. In my case, I now have nineteen people (including sons-in-law and grandchildren) to worry about instead of four! And the world in which my grandchildren are growing up seems much scarier than the one in which I raised my children.
What mothering fears have you battled lately? Whether you are pregnant with your first child or trying to steer your youngest child through the teenage years, temptations to fear (or to its opposite: self reliance) litter the mothering landscape. Scripture seems to bear witness to this. While all Christians are frequently urged to trust God, women are specifically exhorted in 1 Peter 3:6: “do not fear anything that is frightening.”
I love Scripture’s honesty! It admits right upfront that there’s stuff that is frightening. In fact, Scripture often predicts we will face much trouble and hardship in this life. And nowhere is this more true than with our children. Where else in life do we have more significant responsibility (eternal souls), face such daunting challenges (sinful heart, hostile world), and feel so inadequate and ineffective?
But we are not to fear anything that is frightening. We are to trust in God.
Trusting God is not a one-time decision or something we can accomplish in a month. We will have to fight to trust. Some days we must fight hourly, even on a moment-by-moment basis. Like raising children, growing in trust is a life-long effort.
But we are not alone. We have the Holy Spirit inside of us to guide us into all truth. We have our Sovereign Father ruling wisely and graciously over all. We have our Savior’s righteousness to run to when we fail. Many things are frightening, but we have many more reasons to trust God than to fear.
Mothers, we will never outgrow our need to trust God for our children, but neither will we outgrow the faithfulness of God: “the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children” (Ps. 103:17).
I once saw a Family Circus cartoon that showed three children leaning on the edge of their parents’ bed, watching them while they slept. The caption underneath was one child’s remark: “They look so sweet and peaceful when they’re asleep. You wonder how they could ever yell at us during the day.” Do you ever wonder if this happens in your home? That your kids think of you as a mean mom? That your failures as a mother define you and determine your children’s future?
When you add the feeling (or reality) of a mothering failure to the exhaustion, the endless work, and the temptation to compare yourself to other moms, you have a perfect motherhood storm.
This happened to me countless times when I was raising my children. I would fail in my mothering—either by something I did, or something I didn’t do—and I was sure it was a sign I would ultimately fail. That was it. My kids would never “turn out.” I had ruined them forever.
I remember one time I got angry at one of my daughters. Although I had repented before God and asked my daughter’s forgiveness, I still felt terrible. I berated myself for treating my child in such a manner. I was convinced the damage was irreparable.
But my husband encouraged me: “Because of your humility in asking her to forgive you, she feels close to you now than before.” And he was right. This daughter and I were experiencing the sweet closeness that follows repentance in a relationship.
Now I’m not issuing a free pass to sin! I am not saying, “It’s okay to be unkind to your children. They’re tough. They can handle it.” Sin is always the wrong choice. It does have consequences. So by the power of the Holy Spirit, we must work tirelessly to eradicate it from our lives (Rom. 8:13). When we sin we must not make excuses, we must confess our sin to God and humbly ask our children for forgiveness.
But we must not succumb to despair or live with low-grade condemnation or guilt. This maligns the gospel and does not produce the fruit of repentance or serve our children. Rather we must return to Scripture. We must remind ourselves of the truth that God is faithful and just to forgive us from our sins and to cleanse us from unrighteousness (1 John 1:9), that he is busy conforming us to the image of His Son (Rom 8:29), and that he works all things (even our mothering failures!), for our good and the good of our children (Rom 8:28).
Then there is mommy-guilt. Few emotions put a stranglehold on our mothering joy like feeling guilty and condemned over our sins and shortcomings.
Guilt has a thousand little voices that whisper in your ear all day long: You’re a failure. You’re going to ruin your kids. How could you do that? How could you NOT do that? Look at all those other moms. They are doing a much better job that you are.
It’s like the radio in our head is set on a guilt frequency and we can’t tune it out. As moms we need biblical truth to cut through the voices of guilt if we are going to maintain our joy.
How do we deal with mommy-guilt? First, we need to learn the difference between biblical guilt and self-imposed guilt.
Scripture’s parenting commands are simple: Teach. Discipline. Love. (Dt. 6.7, Pr. 13:24, Tit. 2:4) If I have fallen short of these commands (which I do all the time!) then I must approach the throne of grace. We’ll talk more about this in the next post.
But genuine guilt often gets mixed up with self-imposed guilt. You see, we’ve got this bad habit of making our own Mother’s Rulebook and adding to it all the time. We read an article about the dangers of such and such, talk to a mom who does this, that, and the other thing, and we scribble down another rule. No sooner have we added one rule than we break three more. Citizen’s arrest! Citizen’s arrest!
When the motherhood bar is set at cultural approval or another mom’s abilities, we’re going to feel the constant condemnation of falling short. So how do we deal with the demoralizing emotions of self-imposed guilt? Again, Scriptures answers are simple.
Trust – God has given me to my children and my children to me. He didn’t match moms and kids like a game of Memory and lose a couple under the couch. He put each child and mother together in perfect love and wisdom. When I view motherhood through the lens of God’s sovereignty the whole scene changes. God designed me to be the ideal mother for my children. There are not some moms who are better suited for motherhood and others who just get by. If you are a mom, you are the one person best suited to your child. God has given you just the right gift-set, the strengths and abilities, and the over-abundant grace to parent your child. Through Christ, you lack nothing your child needs you to give.
Obey – God’s commands are not burdensome (1 Jn. 5:3). We have a mothering responsibility, but it is not burdensome. The rest and peace we long for is found when we simply follow Christ, resisting the distractions of man-made rules or cultural commands and single-mindedly striving to obey God’s law by God’s grace. Through faithful obedience to God’s Word, we will receive power, conviction, mercy, grace, peace, joy and all the best mothering emotions.
When we trust and obey, we get freedom from guilt and freedom to grow. Instead of retreating in resentment or flaunting our flaws, we are free to appreciate the gifts of other moms, free to get their help and advice. And only the guilt-free mother can laugh. We can laugh at ourselves, our mistakes and our shortcomings, and we can invite our children to laugh along with us. Who doesn’t want a mom who laughs?
Real satisfaction comes not in understanding God’s motives, but in understanding His character, in trusting in His promises, and in leaning on Him and resting in Him as the Sovereign who knows what He is doing and does all things well. ~Joni Eareckson Tada
