Confession: everything about being a mother and homemaker is difficult for me. I am unskilled. I lack self-control, patience, and grace. The last 5 years have increasingly shown me one thing: I am weak.
It’s humbling. In my lowest moments I think back to the 20 year old marching across that San Diego college campus. Running between my 3 internships, starting a Christian a cappella group, leading praise team, discipling ladies, graduating early, being encouraged by my professor to pursue a PhD. I felt competent and confident and carefree.
Compare that to the 29 year old me, laying on the floor of my boys’ room in the middle of the night in my cloud of sleep deprivation induced anxiety thinking, “I can’t keep them safe. I can’t keep them safe.”
If that sounds a bit dramatic I will grant myself the caveat that I had those thoughts after my second son seemed to be taking after his brother and developing life-threatening food allergies. When a rogue particle of egg or cheesy toddler hand can kill your child it quickly reduces you into a puddle of acknowledged lack of control.
But it’s not just the food allergies I find hard. It’s cooking and cleaning and basically doing thousands of tiny reps of bicep curls each day with 20 pounds of baby. It’s dying to self, putting someone else first, getting up and doing the next right thing every moment of the day because I’m the one needed to do it. None of selfless service comes naturally and I’m ashamed at my lack of fortitude when I consider the billions of women, all the mothers before me who have borne, birthed, raised, and educated their children while managing their homes (without washers, dryers, ovens, and robot vacuums I might add.)
Rewinding back to that college self would be useless because that girl had zero skills and an appalling lack of basic understanding about how to care for a family. I now know how to do a great deal more than I used to, and have become faster and more adept at my work. I’ve learned my husband and children, their quirks and dislikes, the best ways to encourage them and correct them. But still, the reality is I am only one marital argument, one broken home appliance, one food allergy reaction, one unexpected tantrum, one bad sickness, one harsh criticism from being completely laid out and uncovered as the incompetent sinner that I am.
And yet, God does not despise the weak.
Rather, a look through the Bible shows God seemingly choosing the weak, intentionally selecting those without strength or status or wealth, even cutting down armies of perfectly capable fighting men to demonstrate that the victory is through his strength alone.
Of the two versions of me, the confident one was the fool. It’s true, I cannot keep my children safe, and what hubris causes anyone to think they have the control to accomplish anything by their own might? It is sober and clear vision to recognize that all of my abilities are in the hand of the sovereign Lord of the universe, to be added to or taken away as He sees fit.
And He cares for us. And He loves to glorify his name by being our help and our salvation. He who is my rescuer with a strong hand and mighty arm, will he despise my plea to protect my children and grant me wisdom to steward their health well? Will he not pour out the riches of his mercy and equip me for every good work as he has promised? Will he who sent his only Son, not redeem my own by that precious divine blood?
It is good to know you are weak. Because then God is made (seen as he is) strong. I am a weak woman, and praise God! For the weak have a mighty God.
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