Early Motherhood Can Provide a Unique Window to the Cross– If We Let It
Early Motherhood Can Provide a Unique Window to the Cross– If We Let It
There’s a large group of people at church but not in church– Sunday after Sunday, for as long as church has been held, all across the globe.
These are the mothers.
Moms of little ones sneak out of sermons and slink out of sanctuaries to feed, comfort, and rock their restless babies. Moms haunt the hallways cradling overtired six-month-olds and guiding toddlers to the potty for the third time since service started.
Moms may feel that their time at church caring for the littlest of congregants is a waste of a trip. After all of the consoling and comforting and correcting, church can start to feel like a futile exercise in Parenting in a Different Location.
But even in the interrupted sermons and the forgone worship set, I believe these sisters who find themselves caring for small children are uniquely postured to see Christ.
In an intense life season in which our spiritual walks can tend to take the sideline, it can actually be a special glimpse of the gospel.
Here’s how:
The Physicality of Early Motherhood Grounds Us in God-Ordained Creation
Jesus illustrated his points using a lot of physical examples. He detailed vineyards and farms and threshing floors in his parables.
“I am the vine,” Jesus said in John 15:5 “...you are the branches.”
Jesus is the bread of life. (John 6:35)
He is both the Shepherd and the Spotless Lamb. (John 1:29)
(I often wonder how much our obsession with adjusting and avoiding the physical world causes us to understand the teachings of Jesus less and less.)
Yet in early motherhood, we are forced to reckon with the physical.
From pregnancy to the birth to postpartum, nursing, and keeping up with rambunctious toddlers and juggling multiple little children all at once, each of these periods requires a great amount of good health and energy.
Early motherhood plucks us out of the abstractions of our busy adult lives.
We are throttled to the basics of survival: sleep, as we wearily rock our babies in the dead of night. Food, as we feed our babies from our own bodies. Shelter, as we clothe and cocoon those who are so dependent on us to dress and care for them.
Providing the basic elements of survival for others brings us back to earth.
This is a very good thing for thinking about the Kingdom of God. It is an opportunity to disentangle ourselves from abstractions and to ground ourselves, like bare feet on fresh soil.
Truths that may have been hazy to us in our modern, technological worlds become prominently clear: God made us and our babies. Every hair on our heads and every cell in our bodies is expertly placed by His artful design.
Like the wonder we experience the first time we see the fuzzy glowing images of our unborn child across ultrasound screens or the very first time we hold our babies in our arms after the pain of childbirth or when a baby falls asleep serenely in our arms as if no trouble in the world existed, we are filled with fresh appreciation for our Creator.
Babies draw us back to the very basics– the beautiful intricacies of our created world– which we discover aren’t really all that basic after all.
2. The Love and Sacrifice of Early Motherhood Points to an Even Greater Love
Our hearts seem to expand and almost burst with tenderness toward our children.
God designed our biology to support all of that love needed for both mother and baby.
Women experience a rush of hormones after giving birth that are vital for caring for our babies. Our brains literally change in pregnancy and after birth to fit our new role. Our senses are sharpened and refined to meet the needs of our babies. Oxytocin, the bonding hormone, is released from our bodies as we feed and care for these precious new members, and they release oxytocin right back to us in a wonderfully designed, God-ordained Love Loop.
Through the battery of sleepless nights and post-birth recovery and challenging days of mothering, there is an enormous amount of love to carry us through.
Even in the literal giving of our bodies to our babies through pregnancy and birth and breastfeeding, we can be reminded of an even greater love.
The sacrifices of a mother are significant. These sacrifices can point us to the saving work of Christ.
While we give our all for our children, Christ even more perfectly and completely gave all for us while we still sinners.
Our acts of motherly love are great– and the finished work of the Cross a love greater still.
3. Early Motherhood Especially Reveals Our Need for a Savior
There have been uncountable moments in early motherhood where I’ve felt at the end of myself.
I have been the most exhausted I’ve ever been yet faced with the most important duties I’ve ever been entrusted with.
My mothering has so often failed to be seasoned by the Fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). I have made many mistakes and selfish decisions.
These moments of early mothering bring me low. They place my sin on full display, as missable as a flashing billboard.
But there is one great and profitable irony about our lowest of valleys, about our chiefest of sins.
These trenches are the vantage points from which we better see the shining glory of Christ, the goodness of the gospel.
Early motherhood, in all its joys and struggles and imperfections, can show us how vitally necessary is the blood of the Lamb. How sweet is the saving work of Christ!
What a gift it is knowing, as I mop up spills and tie little shoes and tiredly rock my babies to sleep, that even in my weakest mothering moments, there is a Savior ready to wash me clean and count me righteous.
Don’t give up hope, fellow moms.
You may miss out on some things in this season.
Others become even more apparent.
Look to God. He is even more greatly revealed at this time– if you remember to take a look.
