motherhood

On Turning Three and the Passing of Time

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Over this past weekend, my youngest turned three years old. She’s been convincing everyone in her path that she’s B-I-G for a year now, no argument there. Her requests for her special day were a “sparkly” cake and paper dolls. Anything for you, Babe (because she is my baby). And so with butterflies hanging from the ceiling and three candles flickering on her sparkly butterfly cake, we celebrated her growth and the gift of her life.

For me, as the mother, the day held a lot of emotion and reflection. As mothers everywhere do, I reflected on the privilege of carrying and birthing her; for us, right here in our home, in water, just as the sun crested the hill through the window. “Shut the curtains please!” I pleaded moments before my body would be pushing her out, the heat of the sun and the heat of the work too much at the time. As she took her first breath, the light of her life entered our world, forever altering it. The older girls marveled at this new little sister, so brand new, and covered with all that white… what? That first day of her life was a hot late summer day, and I rested in my bed with my baby, the fan on us, the loving gaze of God on us, the miracle of birth a mystery in us yet again. How could that be three years ago?

I reflected on one year ago, how we managed to make it back to South Africa in the middle of the pandemic exploding across the wide world, the day before her second birthday. The US president addressed the nation while we were in the air over the Atlantic, with announcements of borders closing and our seat mates frantic with questions of how to return. “Let us just make it home,” we prayed, boarding our next flight to take us as far south as Africa goes. We landed, hugged our waiting teammates, and deeply worried about that the days after – had we brought COVID with us, to these people dear to us? We marveled at the timing of God, filled with joy and gratitude for being back. How could that be a year ago, bleary eyed and jet-lagged, whipping up a cake in my dear own kitchen finally, for my two-year-old baby?

The passing of time is such a mystery, and like life itself, is tinged with joy and grief, with growth and loss. I am so grateful for my healthy, growing children, and I also miss them as tiny babies, snuggled into me for hours of each day. Time is something I contemplate often; our experience of it in minutes, hours, days, and years it is a construct of our fallen world. Time in God’s kingdom looks far different, “with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). “How old will we be in heaven?” my eldest daughter asks me. How do we imagine an eternity absent of time as we know it?

As with much of the rest of life, I find I must open my hands and heart again to God, and trust him with the mysteries beyond my comprehension. May I grieve and celebrate the growing of my babies, all in the same breath? Yes, I may. Life is a miracle, a gift, a mystery, and we feel the fullness of it in our honesty with ourselves and with God. May I be filled with gratitude and marveling at life, and feel its incompleteness in the same moment? Yes, I may. Life is a joy, a light, and experiencing it in this world is not all that we are meant for. Our aching, our melancholy, is a poignant reminder that our experience of life this side of heaven is lacking, these beautiful lives we live are fallen, and are in need of deep redemption. For those of us in Christ, we have the immense privilege of knowing the earthly side of gospel redemption now, and have the glorious hope of full redemption one day.

And in the meantime, this is where you’ll find me, holding my children close and opening my hands again to our Father, day after day, year after year.

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:12

The Long Haul

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Last week, I returned home from a few hours out working to find my daughters puttering around inside. Almost immediately, the oldest said to me, “Mom, we tried to get the “x” marks off your map… we just wanted to mark where our friends live around the world.” My heart sank as I comprehended her words. Just the day before, I had finally found a world map for our wall, the map I’d been looking for since we arrived in South Africa ten months ago and for the wall which has been bare ever since. I had opened it, to show the girls, then decided to have it laminated so it would last for years, and rolled it back into the tube it came in.

I turned and walked back to our study. Sure enough, there on the floor was my map, unrolled from its tube, marked with “x”s in all sorts of random spots (which friend was it that lived on an island in the middle of the Atlantic, I can’t remember), and thoroughly, quite thoroughly, sprayed with my vinegar spray in a well-meaning attempt to clean said “x’s” back off the map. I could feel my blood pressure rising as I knelt down, felt its soppiness, and recalled that it was the only one that the bookstore had.

Years! I thought. For years we have been teaching our children to obey, and yet! Sure, I hadn’t specifically said, “please don’t unroll my map, mark it with “x’s” and then clean it off with vinegar spray,” but still? When will they just get it? I thought grimly.

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I wonder how God must have felt when dealing with the Israelites regular grumbling and unfaithfulness over the course of hundreds of years. Or when David’s very deliberate disobedience had huge and devastating consequences. Or when Jonah, after God rescued him from his disobedience through a big fish and changed the Ninevites hearts, struggled so much with hatred of others that he asked God to end his life.

We know from the biblical account, that “the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Ps 103:8).

Fortunately, the Lord reminded me quickly that morning, before I could say something I would later need to apologize for, that indeed, obedience in my own life is a long-term project. Though I have been saved by grace for the majority of my life, I still struggle to obey, most often in my heart and in my attitude. Could I truly expect perfection from my own children when I fail regularly?

In that precious moment, God taught me this: A faithful mother is in this for the long haul. Just as God himself has been since the beginning of the world. There’s a reason no biblical author ever wrote about the ease of faithfulness, the quickness of learning obedience. There’s a reason we have been instructed to run with endurance, because finishing well requires it (Heb12:1). There’s a reason we are admonished to remain steadfast under trial, because trial will come, and steadfastness will be an absolute necessity if our faith is to survive (Jas 1:12).

In that precious moment, God taught me this: a faithful mother is in this for the long haul.

Obedience is not something that I will teach my children and expect that they will have mastered by age five, despite any parenting books that may have indicated otherwise. Rather, my faithfulness as a mother looks like loving them when they fail, and gently instructing them yet again from God’s Word about what obedience looks like. While I know they will not be perfect this side of eternity, I trust that as I seek to be a faithful mom and as God works in their hearts, growth will result, slow though it may be at times.

When I think of how God has faithfully loved me despite my disobedience, how he gently yet often firmly makes clear my shortcomings, how he teaches me over and over from his Word, I rejoice. And I prepare my heart for another day of loving my children and faithfully teaching them those same truths that I taught them yesterday, last month, and last year.

“Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart” (Prov 3:3).

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I hung the map anyway, dried bubbly and with “x’s” in the middle of the Atlantic. And now, when I see it, I am reminded that I am walking alongside my children in their journey to godliness for the long haul, just as God is faithfully walking with me.

originally published on August 10, 2017

Enjoy Every Minute

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Enjoy every minute.

Three little words. Words that elicit a rushing force of guilt like no others for this mama. In that early morning hour, hour after hour, when my arm is falling asleep because I’ve been laying on that side nursing my babe yet again and my eyes are drooping and the clock indicates only a few more precious hours of opportune sleep exist before the upcoming day.

In that normal morning hour when I rise to sounds of three little people who need me more than anyone has ever needed me before, and I feel like I have very little of worth to give.

In that breakfast time when my toddler refuses one more bite of her favorite oatmeal as a test of will and I must be consistent so she knows she can learn that love is not about just giving her what she wants, and so we sit and wait, for one of us to give in.

In that mid-morning hour when I think my baby needs a nap but she cries because she thinks not and I wonder how my motherly intuition can fail me so many times. I think maybe I never had that motherly intuition after all.

During that late morning walk when we have just had the most fun at the park and my toddler helps to push the stroller and runs gleefully in front of me, so free and independent and stumbles only like a human who has walked just a year does. I watch her independence falter, her glee fall to pieces, and her tears stream as she runs to me with her little button nose scraped and we are both broken.  

In that glorious naptime hour that is so anticipated and needed when both babies are meant to be sleeping but neither one is and I feel panic rising and my breath is short and I need space, time, quiet, peace and it doesn’t happen.

In that famous witching hour when I want to greet my husband into our peaceful home with smiles and kisses and something besides yoga pants but the kids are grumpy and I am grumpy and we all just need him as soon as he walks through the door. And we get a pizza for dinner.

It’s the hardest in that hour when I put my babies to bed for the night with stories and songs and lots of cuddling and tucking in. I failed this day, again, like I do every day. I failed to enjoy every minute. I will look back on this day in two years, ten years, thirty years and regret that I failed deeply at this and I cannot do anything now to fix it. This thought eats me alive and makes it hard for me to sleep those few hours and clouds my days with these three sweet gifts from God.

So I stopped trying.

And instead, I began to focus on truth, found in God’s Word. Nowhere, fortunately, does God command us to “enjoy every moment.” Rather, he commands us to be faithful. In 1 Samuel 24, as the prophet Samuel gives his farewell address to Israel, he recounts all that God had done for Israel since their slavery in Egypt, and instructs them to serve the Lord: “only fear the Lord and serve him faithfully with your heart. For consider what great things he has done for you” [24]. What has the Lord done for you? Called you to himself? Forgiven your sin? Given Christ to you as your righteousness? Consider these things.

What does faithfulness look like, for you, in your season?

This current season may be one where the Lord is working hard on your sanctification – praise him for that! For “he disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” [Heb. 12:10-11].

For me, faithfulness looks like this: embracing this season with little ones, full of hard and long days, thanking God for these children and the great responsibility of loving them; hourly checking my attitude, that it is not resentful or self-serving, but asking God to help me in my constant small sacrifices, to do so cheerfully; to with my words and actions point my children back to God, modeling for them what it means to “love God and enjoy him forever”; daily leaning into Christ’s sacrifice for me, accepting that God’s forgiveness covers all my sin, resting in his perfect love; seeking to honor God in all the dish-washing, diaper-changing, peace-making. It does not look like: enjoying all those hard moments, and dwelling in a place of guilt when I don’t. God would have us find our full enjoyment in him, not in our circumstances.  But through our enjoyment of him, we can, with gratitude, live faithfully, whatever our circumstances.

For very good reason, this verse has been a favorite lately:

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” [Lam. 3:22-23]

Even when we fail to be faithful, he never does.

Praise God!

originally published on April 15, 2017