Babies having babies

I was not an especially young first-time mom.  A month away from turning 24 the birth of my baby girl suddenly plunged me into the life-long role of mother.  I felt then, and still feel often, that I am much too immature for this job. How on earth could I be someones mother when I feel so strongly the need of my own mother?  How on earth could I be equipped to raise up young hearts to love and fear the LORD when I so often am lost as to what that even looks like in the living out of my own life? 

God has been harping a theme of motherhood in my life lately.  I have been over and over reminded of the call of women in the Lord to motherhood, completely separate from the call to bear biological children or not.  I have been struck by the opportunities to minister that I have stumbled upon in the last year and keep looking around like, "this role can't be for me right?  I mean I still need spiritual mothering!".  It all seems so familiar.  So often God's humble design is to call babies to mother babies.  And this is not just a call to me, it is a call to ALL Women in God's economy. 

I think both directions are crucial in the life of believers.  You are called to mother - to nurture, teach, encourage, strengthen, uphold- but you are equally called to be mothered.  Pursue opportunities to reach out in both directions.  Recognize that you are, that we all are, babies bearing up babies.  Allow yourself to be strengthened by those down the road from you, glean from the grace those around you have received in their time of need.  Allow yourself to strengthen others, sharing from the bounty of grace you have received.

Some of my favorite advice to give is that which I have received from my mother.  She is my credible source on parenting, homeschooling, and general living.  In the same way "For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace." John 1:16.  Be freed to share from what you have received while being fully aware of your great need to continue to receive.  Go bravely fill your role, immersed in the awe that someone so immature could be called to such a high calling.

hide to be found

Swallow it down, swallow it down
or it will take you down as it spills.
Those little eyes are watching you
needing your heart to be still.


i can remember cutting the skin
matching the pain
shoving it back down within
hoping that nobody else would see
notice the broken, torn parts that made me;
aching for someone to see underneath
and rescue my heart from the mouth of the beast.


It's funny this hiding that screams to be found
and lonely this anger that pushes you out.
I want you to leave so you won't see the truth
that I need you to be here,
see down deep,
and rescue.

But what if you notice
and still you don't care?
What if you leave me alone in despair?

So I stand here at odds
with the world and with you
building walls that can hide me
from critical views
till I find some way to give love without needing
an answer in tones that can resonate meaning
into this whole mess that we're held to walk out
because Christ and his church is what it is really about.

foot falls down, foot falls down
and then rinse and repeat
and give thanks that the broken
must die to be reaped.

Loss of self.

I just turned thirty. I am old enough that I should no longer be a child, but young enough that I still have more than half (lord willing) of my learning ahead of me. I have birthed two babies and am currently nurturing another in preparation for birth; I have entered marriage; I have had a career; I have moved to be closer to family, then been carried farther away than ever before by God's call on my family's life, and all of these have carried their own growing pains. There have been phases of life when for all the "hard" I couldn't really feel anything, then phases where I felt so much when it didn't seem like there was a cause.  And it's amazing to think that in it all and through it all, the cause and the call, and the goal have all been the same.
  In all my striving, seeking, working, hoping, living, the call has been to "find myself".  This season I am now walking through is so interesting because so much of who I "am", demonstrated in what I do, is wrapped up in the identity and needs of other; my children, husband, and church. And sometimes the acinine fear that I am loosing pieces of who I am sneaks in and whispers that I need to grip those shards tightly or I will entirely loose what makes me myself. Then I read John 12:24-26. "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life... Where I am, there will my servant be also." All my fears are answered here. If I am merely trading identities, finding myself IN my family, IN my church, then I am still loosing life. If I am gripping the things that I feel make up who I am, then I will end up alone and empty handed. But, if I am following Christ where he leads, and sacrificing my very life as I live it, then I am gaining Christ who is my life. The thought that my "self"- made valuably in the image of God- is of more value than the one that I dimly reflect is preposterous! How could any piece of me lost by surrender to Christ (the one who breathed it into life at first) ever be lost at all? How could it be anything other than healed and perfected?!

  So, my plea for this third decade of my life is that I might only loose the things which I have been given as I release them to Christ, following where He is. No substitution of identity, no side line idolatry,  no fearful resentment of self-loss, but open palmed offering of everything that I've been given. That I might follow Christ and be found where he is.