You have been deemed worthy to parent these children and lead them after Jesus and you have been equipped to do so. God chose YOU. You are enough, you have enough, and you do enough.
2.) No matter what the whole world says about parenting and schooling and feeding and sleeping and disciplining, God has a unique plan for your family and to him alone are you accountable.
There are thousands of books you can read, thousands more voices you can listen to, and still thousands more opinions that can wreck God’s plan for your family if you take every word spoken on the matter to head and then to heart. When God made you and then gave you a family, he put a certain DNA in you guys that our world needs and it’s your job to abide in Christ, keep your heart soft towards the movement of the Spirit in and around you, and then foster an environment in your home that allows your family to respond to the Spirit’s leading. This looks different for every family.
Abide in Christ, be in community with other believers, submit yourselves to a spiritual authority, and guard your heart against every opinion that threatens to wreak havoc in what Jesus is doing in and through you.
3.) Before you were a mother, you were a child of Jesus. Nurture that person’s gifts, abilities, passions, and heart.
Underneath all the layers of mothering, there is a person with a unique purpose in this world, that may or may not be tied to your mothering. Do what you have to do to nurture those things you used to do before children. Allow yourself time to be you, apart from your children. Try to remember the last time you felt God’s pleasure. What were you doing? Do more of that. It is a healthy thing for your children to see you doing what God made you to do. It gives them permission to do what God has made them to do.
4.) You are a person, not a machine.
When God made you, he did not make you because he needed someone just like you. He made you because he wanted to enjoy you. He made you because he wanted to glorify himself through your life. He made you because he desired to stand back and say Man, look at her. She is a glorious thing to behold. I did a good job. So stop plate spinning and working your fingers to the bone. Let your house get dirty. Grow soap scum in the bathroom. Let your kids wear dirty socks and skip baths. Observe the Sabbath so you can remember that God does not need you to keep the world spinning.
Your children feel their own worth, not by seeing how much Mama can do, but by how much Mama believes that she is a beloved child of God, worthy of rest and play and fun.
5.) You are not the glue that holds the family together. You are a member of the family, playing one role, and Jesus is holding everything together.
6.) Jesus loves my neighbor’s family as much as he loves mine.
My family is not special. {that sorta stinks, huh?} My family’s calling is no more important that any other family’s calling. We are just one family, living in one place, among one group of people with the task of loving our people and our place with wild abandon, making much of Jesus with our lives. I belong to the people next door and down the street and they belong to me. We are meant to be part of a larger family, one that God would recognize as something beautiful.
We are responsible for leaving the footprints of Jesus in our place- not the legacy of our family name.
7.) Mothering is what we do. Mission shapes how we do it.
In the midst of laundry and bickering children, the undercurrent of our life’s mission is shaping how we mother. If your life’s mission is to acquire every good thing this world deems good, then your mothering will shift to hold your mission. You may work 2 jobs to get ahead and shuttle your kids from sitter to sitter to sitter. If your life’s mission is to rear successful kids who get into the best colleges, your mothering will shift to accommodate all the schooling and extracurricular activities and volunteer hours it takes to accomplish that. If your life’s mission is to point your kids to Jesus and send them out into the world as people who love their neighbors as themselves, your mothering will reflect that.
What is your life’s mission?
Look at how you mother your children.
8.) I can do all things through Jesus who gives me strength.
That’s it. I can mother my kiddos because Jesus lives in me.
Mothering is the hardest, best thing I’ve ever done that I never want to end.
And if I could give you one thing to tuck in your pocket it would be this:
You are the person God chose to hold his babies. Lift up your head and mother them like you believe that.
What are some things you believe Christian moms need to remember? Let me know if the comments below.
