Mothers: Closer to Christ (Part 3)
>>> series continued from Mothers: Closer to Christ (Part 1) and (Part 2)
Some Thoughts on Everyday Motherhood
“Polish Madonna” / “Saturday Ray” by Piotr Stachiewicz, early 1900s
Daily motherhood is, perhaps, the most overlooked of ongoing spiritual experiences. It is a series of everyday chances for mystical union with Christ.
Jesus uses motherhood to invite our continual imitation of Him. Will we choose to deny ourself, daily, out of love for our children—out of love for the Father? Will we die to self, again, that we might have both hands free to pick up the cross of service and march on?
“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23)
The truth is: we will not. At least, not always—not as often as we should.
We are not Christ, we do not love perfectly. We drop, avoid, offload and resent the cross of motherhood. We choose self—over service, over child, over Christ. We “play the martyr” mother, lacking the right interior disposition or loving attitude, and so our sacrifice comes out sideways. We do our share of wounding, even unintentionally.
But He is not done with us yet.
For the sacrifices of motherhood allow us minute-by-minute chances to unite ourselves with Jesus, to practice His flawless love. For our love will be ignored, rejected, and misunderstood. We will suffer directly in the hands of the very ones we want so much to love and serve. We will be hit, scratched, bit, spit (up) on. We will try to lead our children to heaven, and they will despise and reject us. We will be shunned and hated, whipped by words and acts of defiance.
And it is exactly here that Jesus draws us to Himself. For has He not suffered these very same crosses for us—His precious children? Will He not show us the way?
It is love unfailing—Love, Himself—who calls to us in motherhood’s every broken and perfect moment. From our spot on the ground under the cross of motherhood, we are closer to Jesus than ever before. He has not just handed us a treasure chest of maternal crosses and departed, but He hovers, always near. We need only look up to see Him suspended in hope, waiting with hands outstretched, just that we might permit Him to hold or help us.
When the weight of motherhood brings us to our knees, leaves us in tears, it is because a blinding ray of His love has illuminated a cold and barren piece of our heart. The ice thaws out our eyes, the windows of the soul. In His love—in the fresh, bright light of Christ—we are invited to take another look, inside.
We must ask: is it us, Lord? Is our difficulty a lack of trust or surrender, an unwillingness to give more—to die to self, again? Has our self-control been shoddy, flimsy, volatile? Are we drowning in self-pity, inflated expectations, disordered attachments? Have we been counting the cost?
For to love like Jesus is to continue to empty the deep well of self, fully aware it may never be refilled. To love—to really, truly love—is to persist for the good of another, even as it stings and costs us. It is to push aside our wants, our personal preferences, the way our life might have been. And the satiety of our motherhood is in this irony: it is unearthed by the self we have lost and allowed Him to carve away for the sake of our children. Not a single drop in the bloody puddle of our loving motherhood escapes His notice.
Jesus wastes no morsel of our motherhood. He sees and counts our every ordinary act, each endured inconvenience. The late-night clusterfeeding, the accepted and rejected bites, milk runs, packed lunches, water refills, special birthday dinners. The shuttling drop-offs and pick-ups, groggy 2 a.m. wakeup hugs, the nights spent in a chair, on the floor, or in tiny bed not our own. The changed diapers, stain-laundered shirts, paired socks, and zipped coats, too. The band-aids, flu clean-ups, hospital check-ins, rounds of therapy. The affirming words, the comforting hugs, the homework help, the loving discipline.
“for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’
And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’ (Matthew 25:35-36,40)
