Happy Mother's Day

It’s only been ten years since I became a mother, but in that most significant decade of my life – the one where every word and deed became about someone else – in that most demanding and magnificent and beautiful decade of my life, what I’ve learned is that motherhood is often about loss. 

You lose your body first.  It begins to feel all wrong and look completely different and defy everything you once believed about what it must mean to carry another human being inside of you.  You shop for maternity clothes and feel the flutters and you can’t imagine ever being happier, while deep within, things are changing that can never be reversed.  The miracle of life, of God creating a son or daughter who bears His very image, has taken over.  Your body has done just what God meant it to, and it will never be the same.

A pregnancy goes by and then, that very image of God, that precious son or daughter arrives in a rush of fear and pain and exhaustion and the most complete wonder and jubilation you’ve ever known.  And the loss continues.  He opens his eyes just for a moment and looks so intently into yours that you’re certain he sees all the way to your soul.  His tiny hand wraps around your finger and his lips meet your skin and your heart is lost forever.  It enters him and becomes him and you know without a doubt that it will never again beat without the knowledge that all is okay with him. 

Within days, your body and heart now wholly given over, you lose the rest of yourself.  You were once a daughter, a teacher, a wife, a friend.  Now, the days and nights run together with the relentless responsibilities and you don’t think you’ll ever be anything again except his mother.  The one who feeds him.  The one who holds him and rocks him and can’t stop staring at his precious, perfect face.  The one who gives up everything else to pour herself into the helpless image of God who never stops needing.

Days become weeks, and in the middle of a dark, endless night you realize not only have you lost yourself, you’ve lost your husband.  Not completely and not forever.  You simply understand there is another source of his adoration and his cup runs over with the joy of it, and you’re glad for that.  You’re grateful he has accepted the call of fatherhood with such enthusiasm.  Yet, you know a part of your husband now belongs to his son, and while you’re glad for that, you feel the loss, and it stings.

The loss doesn’t end there.  You lose sleep worrying about him.  You lose energy trying to keep up with him.  You lose confidence trying to understand him.  You lose patience trying to teach him.  You lose your faith when he’s sad or hurt or flailing in all his imperfections.  You lose your pride as you watch your own mistakes pile up so high you can’t see through them.  You lose your mind trying to make all his dreams come true.

The losses pile up one after the next as the weeks become months and years and all you can think about is how you keep losing time with him and conversations with him and opportunities to influence him and . . . him.

He’s meant to go. 

I’m meant to let him. 

There is so much delight and pleasure and enjoyment in the blessing of motherhood.  His voice, his smile, his laugh, the way he breaths when he’s sleeping.  The elation motherhood brings comes suddenly, and frequently, filling me with so much joy it’s hard to contain.  The happiness I receive from being a mother has existed as the focus of parenting from the very beginning, and I imagine it always will.  Still . . . underneath that constant joy, the loss remains.  

Motherhood is often about loss.  

Motherhood is mostly . . . about love.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mamas out there – may the love of watching them grow always overshadow the loss of watching them go.

I’ve been feeding people lately.  Lots of people.  They were good people I was feeding, no doubt.  Artists and volunteers working together to provide beautiful things for a privileged community.  I fed approximately 150 people for breakfast, lunch, and heavy snacks for three days straight.  Oh, I had tons of help.  In fact, I didn’t have to cook or bake a thing myself – it was all done by a mass of amazing volunteers who showed up with the items I requested at regular intervals, and then assisted me in distributing those items.  I am beyond grateful for their support.  I'm also tired, sore, sick at the idea of setting foot anywhere near a grocery store, and, quite honestly, a bit disgusted with myself.  

Because here’s what happens when a mind is trying to lean into God, and that’s what I’m doing, right?  That’s what I want to do.  I want to become more like my creator, which means I should think like him and act like him and want with everything I am to serve like him.  And so, when I’m feeding hundreds of people a day, and watching them enjoy the delicious coffee and salads and breads and appetizers and desserts and . . . the list goes on and on and is filled with all those yummy things you crave when trying to lose a few pounds . . . when I’m feeding all those people all those things, I can’t help but think of the people I’m not feeding.  The ones who don’t need to lose a few pounds.  The ones who haven’t eaten in days, whose bellies are round and swollen from malnutrition, whose legs are deformed from a lack of the minerals and vitamins essential for human existence.

The ones who need me to feed them.    

The Bible defines injustice as the abuse of power – when a stronger person abuses his or her power by taking from a weaker person what God alone has given the weaker person (life, liberty, dignity, fruits from love and labor).  That's easy to understand.  Of course, the Bible is even clearer on how we should be responding to injustice.  God calls us to love those who suffer injustice (Hebrews 13:3).  He commands us to “seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”   

I recently read a book by Gary Haugen called Just Courage. Haugen claims that at the center of almost all suffering in the world is the problem of violence.  We can provide food, shelter, schools, and medicine to people who are hungry, homeless, uneducated, and sick, but those things won’t meet the needs created by the root cause of all their problems – violence.  Someone has violently taken their businesses, their homes, their freedom, their dignity, their livelihood.  Someone has been purposely unjust, and those suffering from the injustice don't need our charity.  It's wonderful to provide them with a meal or a pair of shoes, but we will not permanently change their lives unless we assist them in providing those things for themselves.  What they need is for the violence being committed against them to stop.  They need justice to be served. 

We’ve all heard that saying, “One doesn’t believe something by saying it is true or even by really believing it is true.  One believes something when they act as if it is true.” 

Why do I fail to act on what I claim is true?  I announce to the world what I believe, and then behave differently.  I want to follow Jesus.  I want my life to mean something, to make a difference in this broken world.  Yet, most of the time, I live as if I'm scared of where Jesus might lead me to actually make that difference.  Or I convince myself there is simply too much injustice in the world, that I can’t possibly make a dent in it, so why bother?  I use my fears and inadequacies to stop me dead in my tracks. 

Nothing stopped Jesus.

He did just what God sent him to do.  He paid the price for me, for us.  But make no mistake friends.  There is still a price to pay.  We are not being honest with people if we don’t make sure they understand there is a price to pay for following Christ.  Because there are battles left to fight - against hunger, against suffering, against evil, against sin, against injustice.  I can’t sit back and rest in the joy that comes from knowing I’ve been rescued.  I must now become a rescuer of others.       

Facing injustice is scary.  It’s overwhelming.  I don’t want to see the hunger and the poverty.  I don't want to see the swollen bellies.  I don’t want to see the deformed limbs.  I don’t want to see the sex trafficking and the slavery and the brutality inflicted on men and women and children.  But He has asked me to. 

Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing."

Lord, help me lean into you, hold onto you, trust unto you.

Lord, don’t let me be a good woman who does nothing.