motherhood

Moms: Trust God to Care For You

MARISSA BONDURANT | CONTRIBUTOR The world tells us that self-care is the key to living a balanced, happy, successful life. We are encouraged to take time for ourselves, to rest, and to care for our bodies. After all, if we aren’t caring for ourselves, then how can we care for others? There is wisdom in that, but the reality is that sometimes we have intense mothering seasons where our needs must take a back seat. Any mom who has had the flu, alongside the rest of the family knows this. Yet even in those seasons, when self-care isn’t possible, the gospel offers us tremendous hope and encouragement. Let God and others care for you. Two of my girls have needed surgeries and a variety of procedures and tests to address serious medical issues. I handed a daughter to an anesthesiologist almost 20 times in just five years. Each time we’ve gone through one of these ordeals, people reminded me to take care of myself. But, when you have a young child suffering, and only mommy can soothe her, taking care of yourself becomes impossible. In these seasons I’ve found encouragement in remembering how I was made. In the Garden, the first thing God says that is not good about his creation is when Adam is alone (Gen. 2:18). We were made to be cared for by God and by others. It’s part of our good design. I’d argue that “self-care” is necessary, but not sufficient in meeting the very real, and very valid needs that we have as moms. Being cared for by others requires that we practice vulnerability. We must allow others to see us when we are weak and then allow them (and sometimes outright ask them) to help us. I’ve learned that even if we are nervous about burdening our friends, it is actually a joy for them to care for us. God wants to care for us too. His Word nourishes our souls like food nourishes our bodies (Jer. 15:16). He cares for us by convicting us of sin (John 16:8), comforting us when we’re hurting (2 Cor. 1:3-4), providing wisdom in abundance (James 1:5), and interceding when we need prayer (Rom. 8:26)...

Moms: Trust God to Care For YouChristina Fox2024-05-01T15:51:28+00:00

Joy and Sorrow in Motherhood

BETHANY BELUE | CONTRIBUTOR It was a Tuesday morning, two weeks before Mother’s Day. I parked my car outside my doctor’s office and prayed a quick prayer: “God, please help this baby to be healthy.” I walked in expectant, excited, and a little nervous. It was only a few minutes later as I lay on the table with the screen in front of me that I saw my baby for the first time. This very small baby with a heart that wasn’t beating. The silence in the room was deafening. My heart immediately started racing and I looked at the ultrasound tech as the expression on her face told me what I already knew. “I’m so sorry,” she said. My body froze, fear washed over me, and I knew then I was facing yet another story of motherhood that I didn’t want to face. I went home later that day to my two small children who had no idea what Mommy had faced that day. The innocent joy on their faces and excitement to see me brought a lift to my heavy heart. I was immediately brought back into the reality of my world and the incredible gift these long-awaited healthy children were to me. For the days and weeks following that Tuesday morning, joy and sorrow were held hand in hand as I held my children a little closer while at the same time, aching for the child in my womb. Joy and Sorrow in Scripture All throughout the Bible, there are stories of the sufferings, longings, hopes, and joys of God’s people through different circumstances of motherhood. The places where they also held joy and sorrow hand in hand. There are the stories of Sarah who became a mother past child-bearing age and was overcome with laughter by the story that was written for her (Gen. 21:1-7); of Naomi, who lost both her sons and her husband, and then in the midst of her grief made the hard decision to love her daughter-in-law from a different people group. She walked in faith as she loved Ruth as her own and watched the Lord’s tangible faithfulness in building her family in a way far different than she could ever have dreamed (Ruth 1, 4)....

Joy and Sorrow in MotherhoodChristina Fox2024-05-10T19:52:15+00:00

Graduation: The Right Time for Ambivalence

CHRISTINE GORDON | CONTRIBUTOR I remember the first time I felt the terrible grief in my chest. I was sitting on the black couch in my living room where I always sit, reading an email about move-in dates for fall 2023 at Western Kentucky University. My husband and I discussed possible dates while my oldest, still just 17, waited for the verdict. A minute later, the date had been chosen. I entered “Elliot Move in” to Tuesday, August 15 at 1:40 on our shared family Google calendar. Then I started to sob. A Mixture of Feelings Seventeen years felt like a very long time right up until I had an end date. Suddenly, all of the realizations began to come to mind: I would no longer hear his Sonic Bomb alarm clock along with the vibrating extension under his pillow that woke him up and made me laugh out loud every morning. There would be no more calls from a rushed boy between school and work asking me to “pretty please make me a quick grilled cheese.” I wouldn’t hear his voice yelling with his dad as they watched Tottenham Hotspur games (Premier League soccer) together in the living room. He was moving 289 miles away, to another state, where I knew no one. Neither did he. Of course this had always been the goal. My job, like any mom, for the first part of his life had been to get him ready to make it in the world apart from me. And in many ways, through a miracle of God’s kindness and a whole lot of help, we had accomplished that goal. But all the practical plans faded as I worried through the days and nights. Would he ever make friends? Could he handle the load? Would God take care of my baby when I couldn’t? These were my thoughts and feelings as I walked into the school gym for my oldest son’s high school graduation. But I also felt a surge of pride, joy, relief, happiness, and gratitude. I was thrilled Elliot had made it so far, and thankful for his work and perseverance. My heart was an absolute mixture of so many conflicting and different emotions. Graduation, I came to understand, can be a time of ambivalence. Whether your child is moving from the simple days of elementary to the complicated years of middle school, from a vocational school to their first professional job, or through any other graduation, we as moms are bound to feel a ball of emotions that a friend of mine appropriately calls “mixy.” A graduation is a pivot, a landmark, and a rite of passage. It signifies change, which always involves loss. Graduations are a very good thing, and a very “mixy” thing. For moms, they often bring up an emotion that cannot be avoided in this unpredictable world: fear...

Graduation: The Right Time for AmbivalenceChristina Fox2024-04-19T14:40:53+00:00

Encouragement for Moms During the Busy Holiday Season

LISA UPDIKE | GUEST The holidays. The smell of cinnamon wafts through the air. Families gather around our tables. Smiles, laughter, and music. Our hearts fill with excitement and, and…. Oh, let’s just admit it! Our hearts fill with a sense of panic! There is so much pressure heaped upon us, especially women. You must make great grandma’s corn recipe for Thanksgiving and then endure hearing how it’s not quite the same as hers. You must have a perfectly decorated house, mantel overflowing with the figurines passed down from your husband’s family. You must create wonderful memories and uphold all the family traditions. Shop, wrap, smile, go to every activity, don’t gain weight, and make sure everyone is happy. It’s simply exhausting! Isn’t this supposed to be the “hap-happiest season of all”? Well, yes. It is. The holiday season: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the New Year. Each one really is cause for “good cheer.” Taking time to be thankful to our heavenly Father, rejoicing in the arrival of the long promised Savior, and pausing to consider what God has done in the past year while looking forward to His continued work in the new, are actually really good things to celebrate. Our hearts ought to be lifted! So, let’s take a step back and figure out where all this pressure is coming from, put it in its rightful place, and lay hold of the joy that the Lord has for us in this season!...

Encouragement for Moms During the Busy Holiday SeasonChristina Fox2023-11-25T16:12:56+00:00

Encouragement for Those Who Struggle to Pray

JESSICA ROAN | GUEST Oswald Chambers once said, "Prayer does not equip us for greater works; prayer is the greater work.” I hate to admit it, but if that is the case, I am doing a lot of “work” and very little of the “greater work” in this season of my life. When I was single and newly married, I spent consistent time in prayer. During early motherhood, with newborn babies and young children, however, I only imagined a day when I would have more time to read the Bible and pray. Now that my sons are more independent, I am not satisfied with my prayer life at all. I pray, but my prayers seem to be in small snippets or moments of desperation, not the focused devotional times I imagine. I feel like a failure at prayer. Perhaps you are a new mom, a busy professional with a family, or someone in a season of life filled with responsibilities and distractions. Are you too discouraged by what your prayer and devotional life looks like? Perhaps we need to challenge some of the “rules” for prayer we often hold to. Quiet Time Doesn’t Always Need to Be Quiet When I was in college, I had a friend with eight siblings. I came from a home with only two children, so her home environment was foreign to me. When I went to her house, her little sister slept in the window seat so that I could have her bed (five girls lived in one room). One day we were discussing spending time in the word and prayer, and I said something flippant about the importance of finding a quiet place to be alone with God. She just smiled and looked around. In her life, the concepts of “quiet” and “alone” were not feasible. When looking over verses on prayer, one factor stood out to me...

Encouragement for Those Who Struggle to PrayChristina Fox2023-11-01T18:38:45+00:00

A Subtle Attack Against Motherhood

MARYBETH MCGEE|GUEST “But how do I find joy in the middle of the cracker crumbs and dirty diapers? When will it ever get better?” she asked. The woman asking the question had five children under the age of five, and four of them came two-by-two. Her circumstances were challenging, to say the least. Tired but eager to learn, she sat at a folding table in our small Bible study room among women of many generations and walks of life, who had all likely asked a similar question. It Can’t Get Better; It’s Already Good As we dug back into God’s Word, the discussion led us to conclude that it can’t really get any better. God has ordained or allowed every circumstance that we will face. And those circumstances? They are for our good and His glory. How could it get any better than that? Romans 11:36 tells us that all things are “from him and through him and to him.” And this compels Paul’s response—the one we can all echo— “To him be the glory forever. Amen.” Our frustration in the daily challenges of motherhood comes when we confuse the idea of things “getting better” with what we truly desire: joy. But how do we find joy in the Lord in a world that seems to call us in a different direction? The Source of Our Joy There is a trend in social media that makes it seem as though we are fighting our way through the torture of raising children, as if they are like an enemy. Culture tells us that their needs are a burden, their inexperience in life is something to make fun of, and their emotional meltdowns are viral content for entertainment. In many ways, the world would have us believe that challenging seasons of parenting are a bad thing that we have to trudge through until we get to the “better” thing. In the meantime, we can find temporary relief from these frustrations by enjoying the never-ending stream of humorous memes and video clips. But there is a sinister underlying message in this trend of “mommy humor.” My sweet friend, just under the surface of that humor is a lie. It whispers that motherhood should make us happy—eventually. But motherhood can never produce what we will only ever find in the Lord...

A Subtle Attack Against MotherhoodChristina Fox2023-08-17T14:27:51+00:00

God is Near: Certain Comfort for Moms

LISA UPDIKE|GUEST I walked into Walmart thinking about purchasing a watermelon and salad greens to create a nice, fresh summer meal. I pushed my sunglasses up on my head and proceeded through the route I always take: through the seasonal and sale stuff (just in case there is something good) and then past the candles, women’s clothes, and straight to the produce. Walking my route, I was taken aback. Where the sunscreen had been showcased just last week stood huge displays of glue sticks, pencils, markers, and crayons. Excuse me, Mr. Manager; don’t you know I haven’t even gone on my summer vacation? It is certainly not time to think about school yet! Still, no matter how frustrated I might get with the early arrival of school supplies in my store’s aisles, the new school year is just around the corner, and mothers everywhere are preparing their hearts for the new school year—homeschoolers, Christian schoolers, and public schoolers alike. A Fear We All Have Felt In my role as the Director of Children’s Ministries at my church, I’m privy to the thoughts of many mothers. As moms think about “back to school,” one emotion keeps bubbling to the surface over and over. I hear it in their voices, in the questions they ask, and the conversations they have. It’s not a pretty emotion. It’s one that can sometimes paralyze us. Fear. We’ve all felt it. Moms are afraid of the task of raising children in today’s culture. When kids are home with us all summer and activities are more family based, that fear slips into the recesses for a bit. But the thought of sending our kids out again to interact with others at school, sports, even our homeschool co-ops, means exposure where we might not have control over what comes in...

God is Near: Certain Comfort for MomsChristina Fox2024-06-21T19:11:03+00:00

God’s Transforming Work in the Life of Our Sons

JESSICA ROAN|GUEST If there’s one subject I know a lot about, it’s teenage boys. I had only one brother, only male cousins my age, a male best friend, am raising two sons, and am surrounded by them daily in my high school classroom. Boys can be rambunctious, funny, squirmy, hot-headed, sensitive, and sometimes complicated. For some of us, parenting or mentoring teen boys feels frightening, like trying to tame a tornado you can’t even track. And yet, when I listen to the woes of other boy-moms or fellow teachers, I find myself smiling. Not because the challenges they face aren’t serious or concerning at times, but because I have seen the other side. My own father, my husband, and numerous past students were all once teen boys whom people were very concerned about. Were the concerns valid? Yes. Will I have many concerns about my own sons and future students? Absolutely. But I have seen God transform even the most challenging teen boy into hard working, loyal, sincere men, and yes, into men after his own heart. God Loves Making Immature Boys into Godly Men He was young and insignificant, so unimpressive that his father didn’t even consider him when Samuel came to call. The prophet was looking for a king, and David couldn’t possibly be it. He was too small, too young, and not strong enough for a job like that. While Samuel observed the sons of Jesse, “ . . . the Lord said to Samuel, ’Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart’” (1 Sam. 16:7). By God’s power, David kept Saul subdued with the sound of a lyre and defeated Goliath with a slingshot and stone....

God’s Transforming Work in the Life of Our SonsChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:21:29+00:00

Parenting in the Age of LGBTQ+

KELLY URBON|GUEST An “age” is a cultural period marked by the prominence of a particular item or a particular way of understanding the world. By that definition, our current cultural moment certainly represents a new age with respect to identity, sexuality, and gender. Never before have sexuality and gender been so persistently centered, and so drastically redefined. The numbers related to this change can be a bit shocking. According to a recent Gallup poll, the number of individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or by some description other than heterosexual and cisgender, doubled from 2012 to 2021. By far the biggest change is seen in those who have come of age as a member of Gen Z. A surprising 20% of those born between 1997 and 2003 self-identify as LGBTQ+. Given these statistics, it is no surprise that there has been an enormous increase in the number of parents who have a child sit down with them to reveal that they are gay, bisexual, nonbinary, trans or queer, to name a few. Many parents struggle to respond. Especially for parents whose firm theological convictions are in conflict with outright acceptance of these identities, this part of the parenting journey can be especially challenging. While there are no cookie cutter responses sufficient to meet all of the questions and tasks before these parents, the following are a few suggestions that will lay a basic foundation for a godly response. Cultivate compassion and patience Several months ago I came across a quote by Christian author Tim Challies. It has become a foundational principle in my current parenting. Challies wrote, “Remember that your children are sinners who are beset by the fierce enemies of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Be gentle with them and have pity for them. Don’t be yet another enemy to them.” Colossians 3:12 immediately comes to mind: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”...

Parenting in the Age of LGBTQ+Christina Fox2023-08-15T13:25:51+00:00

Encouragement for the Weary Mom

KATIE POLSKI|CONTRIBUTOR Just a few days ago, I picked up my phone to facetime my oldest. I looked at my reflection in the phone as I waited for my daughter to answer and noticed how tired I looked. “Does my face always look this exhausted?” I asked my daughter when she answered the call. “Mom,” she said, “you look like you always do.” I suppose it should be no surprise that the daily grind begins to show itself physically. Work, grad school, and other responsibilities certainly make me look forward to laying my head on the pillow each night. But where I feel the greatest weariness, at times, is in mothering. Being a mom is one of the most rewarding jobs the Lord has given me, but it has also been the most wearing. From infancy on, a mother regularly plays the role of referee, chauffeur, counselor, comforter, guider, provider, educator, prayer warrior, discipliner, and the list runs on. It’s no wonder motherhood can make us to feel worn down and inadequate. There are many days that I just don’t feel up for the job of being a mom. And thank the Lord for this. Gratitude For Our Insufficiencies Why be grateful for my inadequacy? Because if my children always obey, if I always feel like supermom, then I would have no reason to cling daily to the cross. Without coming to the end of my rope, I would stand in my supposed self-sufficiency rather than recognize the necessity of Jesus’ grace...

Encouragement for the Weary MomChristina Fox2023-08-15T13:34:22+00:00