Bidding moms of young children to rest in the power of Christ

My sons are now sixteen and eighteen, but the days of bending over to care for their needs seems like it was just yesterday.

The years I spent investing my life in theirs felt like a mix of chaos, cherished moments and sheer exhaustion at the time. My mothering isn’t over, it’s just entered another stage, but those early years I needed to hear the messages Liz tenderly delivers in her first book, The End of Me: Finding Resurrection Life in the Daily Sacrifices of Motherhood. 

When my oldest was a toddler and I was carrying around his newborn little brother a woman whose children were grown saw me looking tired one day at church. She pulled me aside and told me to go take a nap. I felt like a failure. I had plans for what I would do with my toddler. I’d teach him to identify colors, read him stories and sing Jesus Loves Me with him. But instead I was exhausted from the screams of my newborn and the tantrum throwing of my toddler. This woman I looked up to didn’t give me a do-better speech, she took my kids and told me to rest. 

Liz’s book calls moms who feel like they’re failing because they’re tired and don’t have the ideal circumstances they imagined, to let their pride, ideals and expectations die. And instead receive the rest and life that comes from trusting in the resurrected Christ to be enough for our mothering. 

Like the older woman who took me aside when my kids were little and bid me to die for an hour in a room with a pillow, Liz calls moms of young children to learn from Jesus and embrace the rest we find in him. 

Young moms need this message. We need each other in the church to help us raise our kids and to help us see our need for Jesus. Liz’s book serves young mothers of the Church well in giving a primer on what dependence upon the power of Christ, not ourselves, looks like in motherhood. 

Liz’s writing is clear and full of scripture. The End of Me is easy to read, and gives young moms who may have very little down time to read a book, a helpful and encouraging message in short chapters with room to reflect at the end of each chapter. 

As a leader in my church’s ministry to children and parents, I plan to give this book to new moms. If you are a mom to young children, or you know a mom of young children, get this book. The End of Me is a welcome word of truth and hope to weary young moms. 

45 is a number

forest during dawn
Photo by Anton Atanasov on Pexels.com

between 16 and the day after tomorrow
it’s a disorienting fog
a miry bog
to get bogged down in numbers
of years
years that go by fast
days that go by slow
slow as the answer
that hasn’t yet come to my prayer

prayer
pray
for
days
and days
and years
and then you’re 45
and you pray more like
a person lost in the fog
starting to recognize
the sound of feet sinking in
deep
deep in the same spot they
got stuck in last
year at 44

why do you keep going round
and round like
hands on a clock
tick
tock
stop
turn around
take a step
out to the side
side by side
with the one
who got you this far
down the road
the road is not going
in circles
just time

but you are running a race
it’s long past this
place
you keep retracing
retrace his steps
keep on because
45 is just a number
along the road
the road
narrow
with a finish line
line up
look up
up where he
saw you and smiled
and said
“It is finished.”

When you feel like you’re endlessly marching around a wall

architecture black and white blur bricks
Photo by George Becker on Pexels.com

“Now Jericho was shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel. None went out, and none came in. And the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city, all the men of war going around the city once. Thus shall you do for six days. Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark. On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. But Joshua commanded the people, “You shall not shout or make your voice heard, neither shall any word go out of your mouth, until the day I tell you to shout. Then you shall shout.” -Joshua 6:1-4,10

This story has always caught my attention.  If I had to put it into my own words: God told Joshua to tell all the people to march around a wall where a bunch of strong and powerful men had locked themselves inside. He said, “Don’t make any noise, just keep marching until the day I tell you to yell.”

I mean of all the things God could tell his people to do to get at a prostitute and her family out of a city of proud and strong people.  March around a wall?  How mundane. How boring. How redundant.

I’m sure there were conversations back at the camp at night after days of walking around the wall of Jericho in silence.  I’m sure there were those who wondered, “Why in the world are we doing this?”

Do you ever feel like you’re living this life of faith, doing what God tells you to do, and it seems like you’re walking in circles?  Do you have a person or people in your life that you long to see surrender their hearts to Jesus, but year after year goes by and there’s no response? No change. No desire to come to church with you. No willingness to talk with you about the gospel. They seem perfectly and firmly shut in, keeping your Jesus out.

I do. And I start to get weary.

Today, I drove into the driveway of my house, the grey skies and dormant yellow grass leaving a dull hew on the visage of my normal veiw of home. I shut the car off and sat there for awhile, looking up into the thick cloudy skies, and muttered a prayer of fatigue.  “Lord, how long?  How long am I supposed to keep…”  My prayer was interrupted by the verses above ringing in my ears.  “Yes Lord, how long am I supposed to keep marching around these walls?” I surrendered.

The Holy Spirit searching my thoughts before I spoke them, knowing my doubts and slowness to believe, helped me remember that eventually those walls came crashing down and Rahab and her family were saved.

I love a man who has resisted my desire for him to know Christ for 25 years. And for 25 years the Spirit has continued to give me my marching orders: Keep dwelling with him. Keep loving him. Keep bearing with him. Keep serving him. Keep worshipping me while he watches what the King James Version of the Bible calls, “… the conversation of your life.”

One day the walls are going to fall. Just as Jericho’s walls fell, one day the walls around the heart of those I love, those God has commanded me to stay the course with, are going to crumble at the sound of the instrument God choses to bring them down. And on that day I am going to be overjoyed.

So now, while I sit in my driveway on a cold, grey day, feeling weary of not seeing God bring down the walls yet, I chose to praise him.

Beloved, don’t grow weary in doing good.  God is using your life to save others.  Keep marching. Keep following Jesus. At the right time, whether he uses your mouth or another’s, he’s going to destroy the proud walls that are keeping the guilty from their rescue.