Five years ago, I participated in #The100DayProject and worked through a series titled A Different Motherhood Story. Since I’m not logged into Instagram, I can’t go and see if it’s cringe and this is not a recommendation that you search it out. It might be awful. At the least, I’m sure I would now disagree with some of what I said. But I felt a deep desire to say something different about being a mom because both the church and culture say some strange things.
I’ve been a mother for twelve years. I’m convinced that I know less now than when I start, but I am more committed. Motherhood is bigger than I ever imagined and it’s taking all of me to rise to the challenge. At the same time, motherhood doesn’t define me. My children aren’t my life. I know that work makes me a better mother and that honoring my own humanity makes me better able to honor theirs.
I’m not alone in sometimes feeling like motherhood isn’t worth writing about. We’ve all heard the smears against “mom bloggers.” While I never concentrated on writing about my children, over the years, what writing I’ve done about them has decreased to almost nothing. I want to guard their privacy. I know so little about your life that my “advice” would be essential worthless. The downplaying of writing about motherhood is some internal and external misogyny, among other things; I’m finding more and more that this aspect of my life is shaping my personhood. I don’t mean that in a “this is the most sanctifying thing that could ever happen to a person” kind of way. I’ve listened to childless friends talk about common conversations around parenting and I tiptoe away from that thought myself. If you aren’t a parent, God is as much at work in your life as He is in mine. And if you are a parent, even if you are also a mother, our lives and God’s work in them are probably mysteriously different.
Listening has also taught me that we are not always in the place to participate in certain conversations. If hearing about motherhood is painful for you, for whatever reason, please close the email. Come back next week when we will be talking about something entirely different. I stopped and prayed for you while I was writing and editing this letter.
This week, a friend and I were joking that if more women were preaching and teaching in churches and using the lives of women as examples in sermons, then men wouldn’t be shocked when their time home with small children was interrupted and not at all like what they imagined. This is what having children is. For years, it has reminded me of how interrupted Jesus was. He was going to heal a little girl and is intercepted by the woman who had been bleeding for years. Once He heals her, instead of going to heal the little girl, He has to raise her from the dead. I can’t be certain but I think this resurrection impacted the lives of those who saw it in ways a healing would not have. Here is a man who has power over death, a power that only God has. Who is he?
While I’m not always good at it, I’ve practiced seeing this interruptions as opportunities. What if God is doing something both in them and me through this interruption? And that practice pays off in other ways. Interruptions are part of working with people. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we live well with people, in families and churches and communities, and part of living well with people is making space for them in our lives, even when they interrupt and inconvenience us. Children, our own or someone else’s, are a great reminder of this.1 Honoring them as image-bearers and bearing with their interruptions is a great way to deepen our own image-bearing. It reflects Christlikeness.
It is my hope that one day the church would be familiar enough with references to motherhood that even the men understand more about what it means to be a mom, to experience mothering in our culture. I hope they see the value that women’s stories add to their own lives instead of viewing it as something that could only be helpful for other women. One of my secret hopes for 80-year-old me is that I’ve written a book about what motherhood has taught me about being a pastor. Mothering is an active formational space.
I’m not exactly sure where this series on motherhood will go. I will follow the writing, chase the thoughts that overlap, share some of my own story. But motherhood has been a space for becoming; it has shaped and reshaped me to look more like Christ. It is my hope that whether you have children or not, these pieces will encourage you to investigate your own life and God’s work in you a little closer. He’s near, even when we do not feel Him.
At the same time, I am all about appropriate boundaries with children. (What is appropriate is going to depend on age, ability, neurodivergence, among many other things). I am editing and scheduling this post during quiet time when my kids are playing quietly in other spaces in our home. Mothers need time alone, or time not parenting. That this space is so hard to find is an indictment on our way of living.
This is beautifully written. My husband and I don’t have children yet, but since I recently became an aunt (which is awesome!!), I’ve been thinking a lot about it. Honestly, while I’ve always wanted children, I’ve been a bit afraid of the idea of becoming a mother because I don’t want to go into it thinking they will fulfill something in me that’s lacking. Like you said, children are image-bearers; they’re real, individual people. I really appreciate this insight, though: “motherhood has been a space for becoming; it has shaped and reshaped me to look more like Christ.” This feels important, so I’m going to ponder it for a while.
Also, if you end up writing that book, I will definitely buy it!