God created each of us to accomplish much on this earth in the honor of His name. For years, I’m not sure that I could have ever wrapped my mind around being God’s handiwork. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I was seen by God, much less a created work of His hands. I had endured years of trauma – losing my mother to a car accident as an infant, enduring sexual assault for a decade, living with an alcoholic. I felt unseen, unloved, and unwanted. At only 17 months old, I was unwanted and motherless. And while my dad remarried quickly, so that he could work to provide, I felt the sting of motherlessness at a very young age.
My single dad did not cope well with the loss of my mother, so he married six women and had plenty of girlfriends. With each passing woman, I secretly yearned she’d be the mother that would love me beyond measure – the one that many of my friends had. There was always dysfunction of some sort in my childhood home. Drugs, alcohol, abuse, destruction, confusion. My childhood trauma segued into teen trauma, and that segued into adult trauma. Before I knew it, I was a young, teen mom living in government housing with two children. It was during this time of devastation and loneliness and early single parenting that I realized that I was the only mother that my children would ever know.
If you would have told me, when I was a 19-year-old single mom, oh so many years ago, that I was going to one day found a national ministry that would go on to serve more than 1,000,000 single mothers, I could have never believed it. But isn’t that what God’s Word says He’ll do in Eph. 3:20 – more than we can think or even imagine?
I wonder if you, realize you are in a more-than-you-can-think-or-imagine season. I have no doubt your mothering journey is long and hard – just like mine was. I have no doubt it has been wrought with twists and turns you didn’t see coming, perhaps even aches and pains and wounds that surprised you. But even so, I want to remind you that you are on a holy assignment – raising up your babies in the way they should go. Sure, it may not look like you thought, or perhaps how you’d even hoped. But the journey of motherhood is holy, nonetheless.
You are developing character. You are teaching. You are training up in the ways of the Lord. You are providing and being a living example of the faithfulness of God in many ways – even the hard ones.
My motherhood adventure has been a journey, to say the least. And I am certain there were days and seasons when I got it wrong. I was too strict or not strict enough. I didn’t read enough of God’s Word to them during some seasons. I was tired and cranky in other seasons. But as I reflect on my adult children’s love for the Lord, their commitment to raise their own children in His ways, and the character of Christ they exhibit in their own communities, I am in awe of the sacredness of the motherhood journey.
When I think of how the Lord healed me from bleeding heart wounds during my parenting journey, I praise Him all the more. He restored my identity in Him, so that I could teach my own children His goodness. He taught me how to look beyond myself and serve others – a principle my children operate in today.
Mommas, do not despise your role as mother or fear it isn’t enough. Do not fret that it didn’t look like you’d hoped. You are doing a mighty work. Do not worry that your journey looks different from other mothers around you. Accept this mighty holy assignment from the Lord and work as unto Him.
You will likely know the story in the Old Testament of Nehemiah rebuilding the wall at Jerusalem. He was a high-ranking official in the Persian court who received a visit from men informing him that after the Jews had returned from Babylonian captivity, things were not going well. They were troubled & disgraced, and their city was destroyed. The Bible says in Nehemiah 1:4 that as Nehemiah heard these things, he was grieved, mourning for days, fasting, and praying. Later, the King ultimately granted Nehemiah permission to go to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall. There is much more to the story, as much opposition was faced, but in the end, the wall was rebuilt. Nehemiah faced distraction, attack, complaining, and criticism. In fact, at one point, some dangerous men came to deceive Nehemiah and tried to lure him off the wall of his assignment to harm him and Nehemiah’s response was simple but powerful – “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down.”
In the end…the wall was built. In the end, he completed his assignment – despite how hard it was. The Jews actually built the wall with one hand and fought with a sword in the other.
And here’s the simple and yet powerful instruction that the Lord is giving you, moms:
