On being a Mother

Sometimes I look at my life and get a sort of surreal feeling. I'm living a life I never imagined and sometimes it feels a little weird. When I was young I don't recall having thoughts of being a mother. A wife maybe but children somehow didn't enter into my thoughts of a future life. It wasn't that I didn't like them. I did like them. It wasn't that I thought I should adopt, or help control the earths population and I didn't have the mentality of "why would I want to bring another child into this terrible place" going on in my brain either.

So when I was expecting my first child, something over took me. A fear that now there was someone else who would be dependent on me. I would have to be responsible. But I wasn't responsible. When a few years later, I had several babies hanging on my skirt, I became a Christian and my whole life changed. My outlook on my life changed and my world view changed almost overnight.



When I look back on those days, the choices I made, how I lived my life, I readily acknowledge that I am the last person I would have given children too. If I would have looked at me with the eyes of who I am now and all I encompassed back then (and sometimes even now!), I would have "X"ed me off the list as a potential mother. There wouldn't have been much discussion on the subject either.



I hear discussions like this from time to time. "Susie" knows someone who has 4 kids and they are never bathed, she yells at them All. The. Time. She leaves them every time she gets the chance and on and on and on. She doesn't deserve her children.

I've rode this horse before. Unfortunately, horses like this one tend to falter at one point or another and the rider comes tumbling off. The fall made worse because the horse is so high.

All through the bible we see that God uses children. When God is going to get a work done, he brings a baby on the scene. All those hero's of the faith in Hebrews 11 started as babies and became children. If I say (and truly believe) that God gives children, who am I to say he gave them to the wrong people? Who am I to say "So and so doesn't deserve children?"

The thing is, is that more than anything or anyone else, God has used my children in my life to work in me. To conform me to the image of his Son. They've brought me pain and anguish and great joy and blessing. The former motivates me to change and the later cheers me on.



Mercy is a good thing. Unless I live and breathe with someone, I don't know whats going on in their life. I don't know what they are walking through, pain, sorrow, strife, grief, guilt, conviction. I don't know what God is doing in someones life, what he is working on pruning (and pruning hurts!) or grafting in. The point being that I should leaving the judging to God and look for ways to be a help to the lovely and the unlovely. Freely ye have received, freely give. (Matt 10:8b)God extended mercy to me and still extends mercy to me.

My favorite Mothers Day verse is Isaiah 40:11 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.


Happy Mothers Day to all my mother friends.