Mother

“’As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort You.’ says the Lord.” Isaiah 66:13.

This past weekend I experienced my first time of house mothering six children all by myself for four days. Let me confess something, I am SO ignorant about parenting, and I definitely do not feel mature enough to be responsible for six lives. If I had a reality show about this whole experience, it would be called “I just cleaned that!”. I learned that kids are the experts in this situation. Experts in making a mess, experts in pushing boundaries, experts in trying your patience, experts in ignoring you, but most importantly, experts in making you love them no matter what. The love I am developing for these children is the love of a parent, unconditional love. Love that is so deep, that it almost hurts your soul.

There was a point in the weekend where I asked one of the girls to go do something, and she told me she wanted to do it her way, not mine. It made me think of my attitude in serving. When God asks me to do something, do I continue to seek His guidance and provision or do I set out on my own path? I am learning this humbling lesson through parenting, that God has to destroy my determined confidence in my own convictions, “I know this is what I should do” and suddenly the voice of God speaks in a way that overwhelms me by revealing the depths of my ignorance. I have shown my ignorance of Him in the way I serve Him. I serve Jesus in a spirit that is not His, I hurt Him by my advocacy for Him because it is not of Him. My words sound all right, but my spirit is that of the enemy. “He rebuked them, and said, ‘Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.” If I feel I have done my duty in serving Him, and yet have hurt Him, it was not truly my duty because it has not fostered a quiet spirit, but the spirit of self-satisfaction. Sometimes I imagine that whatever is unpleasant is my duty. But, my attitude should always be “I delight to do Thy will, O my God!”.

Thankfully God is good all the time. And, at least in my life, He has a great sense of humor. There are definitely rights of passages one experiences when being welcomed into motherhood. I had the pleasure of experiencing one during church when the one year old bit off the end of her bottle and shook its contents all over my shirt and then not more than an hour later continued to pee through her diaper all over my lap. Needless to say I did not have a lot of people come up and talk to me after church. But I found no greater purpose in my life than in this last weekend because it was ordained by my Father who loves me like one of these children.