A Perspective on Motherhood

I’ve been a mother–a stay-at-home-mom—for a little over fifteen months now. A question that sometimes surfaces in my conversations with people is, “Do you ever get bored?” The strange thing is—I don’t. And the answer surprises even me. A lot of the enjoyment of parenthood comes naturally owing to a reality that will come upon almost every parent: “Enjoy them. They grow up so fast.” I like the way the guy who did our landscaping this summer put it: “I had a kid because I thought it would slow down time. But it actually made time go by faster.”

Sometimes, when I’m exhausted while playing with Nathaniel, I lie down on the floor, let out a deep sigh, and watch him play on his own. For some reason, every time Nathaniel sees me lying down on the ground, he gets all excited, runs up to me, goes on his knees, and lays his head on my chest, as if he should be lying down with me too. My heart melts every time. The first three weeks of his life, the only way I could get any sleep was to get him to sleep, and the only way newborn Nathaniel was willing to sleep was if he was sleeping on my chest (they say it’s because they get so used to hearing the mother’s heartbeat in the womb). Even the husband has flashbacks when he witnesses our now toddler lying against me. “Remember when the length of his body was the width of yours?” (I’m so thankful my husband actually caught the moment on video–Nathaniel and I both sleeping in the wee hours of the morning when he was only a few weeks old.)

Every night, as his bedtime nears, I do anticipate it because I’m pooped and ready to have some down time (if I’m not too tired to enjoy it). But when morning comes, I’m eager to go at it all over again. Twelve hours later (yes, twelve hours!), I miss him. He was weaned at thirteen months and takes the bottle now; I nonetheless have kept up the routine. I lay him in our bed in the morning, and as he is drinking his milk from the bottle, I am lying next to him. I kiss his cheeks. I play with his feet and hands. I stroke his hair. I poke his nose. He stares back, starts playing with the protrusions on my face. Because I know that one day I am not going to be able to do such things anymore. Just like all the other little activities we do in the day. I can already picture it: God willing, on his wedding day, when he’s ready to go off on his own and start his own family—his mother is balling in the pews.

But it’s more than that. When you look at motherhood as a gift entrusted to you by God, your perspective changes. Suddenly, learning the words to old nursery rhymes (I didn’t even know the words to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” when motherhood began), playing basic games like peek-a-boo and ball-bouncing, reading the same books over and over and over again, coming up with silly diversions to get baby to eat his food—have spiritual implications. In Matthew 19:13-14, it says: “Then the children were brought to him that he might lay hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” So often I have been just as guilty as the disciples. Now that Nathaniel is walking and roams freely and independently around the house, I can very easily get wrapped up in tending to household responsibilities. How many times has he run up to my leg, hugged it, wanting me to play with him, and I use a toy to distract him, only to return to my task? I have to remind myself sometimes that it’s okay to have a sink full of dirty dishes if Nathaniel is asking for a puppet show. I have to remind myself that though a puppet show doesn’t mean much to me, it means the world to him.

Back in high school, while reading the works of Elizabeth Elliot, I was deeply affected by a quote she gave of her husband Jim Elliot, a missionary who was martyred in the field in Ecuador. It has been a life principle for me ever since: “Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.” Motherhood—time and energy, heart and soul, devoted completely to raising your child—is the will of God. Just turn to Proverbs 31, which concludes this way in describing the role of the mother:

“Strength and dignity are her clothing,
and she laughs at the time to come.
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She looks well to the ways of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children rise up and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
"Many women have done excellently,
but you surpass them all."
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the gates.”

Before I became a mother, I had this selfish fear. Adoring reading and writing so much, I feared that a baby would rob me of what I love doing most. When I became a mother, I learned that God is sovereign and faithful; I learned that the more I commit my time and attention to raising Nathaniel, the more time He gives me to do the things I love most. By this I do not mean that the things I love most are able to somehow remain as much as a priority as the child that God has entrusted to me. What it means is that God enables me to continue doing the things I love most while at the same time taming my appetite so that I do not love them more than my child. Because raising God’s child is part of His will, you can rest assured that you will not be left alone to carry out the task. (Don’t forget to pray!)

I am thankful for writers like Dr. James Dobson, Douglas Wilson, and R.C. Sproul Jr., who have taken the time to write about the biblical perspective on parenting. Such writers remind me that, as a mother, I am not simply feeding, changing, playing with, or even teaching right-wrong lessons to my child—but I am nurturing his soul. I love the way R.C. Sproul puts it in his book When You Rise Up (the title is an allusion to the instruction in Deuteronomy 6:4-9, which outlines the responsibility of parents) where he explains what it means for us when we believe that children are a blessing from God: "Once we are settled in this biblical truth, we will see our children as a profound opportunity to be about the business of building the kingdom of God.”

Nathaniel is fifteen-months-old. This means, much to the thrill of his parents, he is beginning to exert his own will quite determinedly.

A week ago, Nathaniel took a pen out of my pencil case. We were in my room and I was folding laundry while he was exploring on his own. I glanced over to his direction when I noticed him being very quiet. I found him holding the cap in one hand, and the pen in the other. He was trying to keep his hands steady so he could put the cap on the pen. Spending time with Nathaniel day-in, day-out, I know that he has a short fuse when it comes to not being able to complete a task on his own. Seeing that his hands were tilted, which prevented him from being able to put cap and pen together, I placed each of my hands on his to straighten them up. He then, successfully, put cap and pen together. But this wasn’t good enough. Nathaniel wanted to do it again, without my help. But each time he did it, I helped him a bit. After several attempts, I decided that I had to let him do it on his own, or else he was never going to put the cap and pen down. But he couldn’t do it. In fact, he was so frustrated that he couldn’t do it, he threw the pen on the floor, began to wail, and even kicked the pen a few times to express just how frustrated he was. So I slowly picked up the cap and pen, put them back in his hands, and explained to him that he needed to be patient and to not give up (though I know that he doesn’t understand a word I’m saying, I’ve learned that gestures and tone of voice communicate just as much as words do).

I can say that this rather mundane activity lasted a good twenty minutes. I can also say that I treasured those twenty minutes. The romantic in me regarded the moment as genuinely beautiful. And then I thought—what if I hadn’t been in the room when Nathaniel was attempting to put cap and pen together? What if I was too busy to notice what this baby was doing on his own in the far corner of the room? What if the moment was lost—simply because I thought that the everyday things, the little things, the ordinary things didn't matter? That they were dull, boring? That they didn’t somehow add up to becoming part of his soul?

The amazing, miraculous thing is that, when God’s kingdom comes into focus, all of it matters. Because all of it is how the message of the gospel impresses upon these little hearts. “Older women… are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” Titus 2:3-5

And then there is the command to parents in Deuteronomy 6:4-9:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

When you sit… when you walk… when you lie down… when you rise… Mothers, I pray that every moment with our children be offered on the altar to our most gracious and loving God.