A Post Mother’s Day Pick-Me-Up

“I Thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength to do his work. He considered me trustworthy and appointed me to serve him.”
– 1 Timothy 1:12 NLT

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Mother’s Day is sweet. Then Monday comes and I remember …

 

I’m a mother to teenagers.

 

I’d like to say this feat has gained me some higher plane of existence, but it hasn’t.

 

Some things have stayed the same over the years. I still wake up in the middle of the night (though I’ve traded dirty diapers for worry and prayer), tantrums (dare I say more civilized?) still rear their ugly heads, and most of my time is spent planning, buying, preparing, and serving food. Always food.

 

Can I be honest?

 

Being a mother is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

 

In no other role have I faced such uncertainty mixed with love and insecurity mixed with joy. Some say marriage is harder. I disagree. In marriage each person comes as a masterpiece already in progress. We only have to figure out how to compliment each other’s artwork.

 

But with children, God gives us blank canvases. Each experience, word, and action we share becomes a brushstroke. Fill the canvas with enough anger, fear or control, and the painting comes out black and gray and stormy. Fill it with too much chaos, inconsistency or freedom, and though the painting may look happy, it lacks depth and measure.

 

Most days I want to whitewash my kid’s canvases and start again. That dark spot over there? I want to take it away. The jumbled mess over here? I’d like a do-over, please.

 

But there are no take-aways or do-overs. There’s only today, and a chance to paint a better picture. But it takes more than just slapping new color over old paint.

 

This last year has been particularly challenging for me as a mom. Our kids are changing and experiencing so much. Not that it hasn’t always been this way, it just feels like it’s happening on a downward slope. The time under our roof is fading fast.

 

I feel the mortality of this phase of motherhood.

 

I’m uncertain of the brushstrokes I’ve laid down.

 

I’m no painter, and some days I wonder why God has given me a turn with a paintbrush at all.

 

But I suppose motherhood paints us as much as it does our children.

 

There’s an opportunity for our canvas to be filled with God-given color, if we keep our eyes on his abilities and not our own.

 

So what do I want my canvas to look like? Do I focus on my fear or control, or do I let God create something I would never have imagined?

 

One of the most encouraging verses in the Bible comes from 1Timothy 1:12:

 

“I Thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength to do his work. He considered me trustworthy and appointed me to serve him.”

 

That’s us mommas!

 

We were called into motherhood

• God’s call conveys his faith in you
• Why? Because he fit you for it
• Whom he calls he qualifies

God considers you trustworthy

• Why? Because he’s making you so
• Not by what you do, but by his power working in you

He appointed you to serve him

• Give thanks to God
• And remember your roots
• Not to live in the past, but to measure who you were then, to who you are now

Our skill as a mother is irrelevant, as long as the one wielding the brush in our hand is the Lord himself.

 

Happy Mother’s Day for the other 364 days of the year!