when I refocus my hope
- Keelie Schroeder
- Aug 14, 2020
- 8 min read
For the past two weeks, I have shared a little about the beliefs that my husband and I have as parents. These are the ways that we feel help our family work best. Unfortunately, there is no chapter in the Bible that tells us how to make these types of decisions. Scripture doesn't point a clear path to the way God says we should birth our children. We don't know if Jesus was an anti-vaxer or if he prefers cloth diapers over disposables.
It is up to us to decide how to parent our children. We have been given this huge responsibility to not only shape our children into image-bearers of our Heavenly Father, living each day to glorify our God...which, thank goodness, we can find specific help in scripture. But, we also have to make decisions about birth, vaccines, childcare, schooling, lunches, sunscreen, parabens, GMOs, bedtime routines, work in the home or out of it, screen time, peanut butter before or after 1-year-old? Ahhhhh...is your anxiety going up as I list the countless choices we have as parents that are not talked about in scripture?? Because I could keep going, just as I am sure you could too. Maybe you don't even have these worries and are wondering what I am so bent out of shape about. Well, to that momma, I would say that there are probably other concerns weighing on your heart if you are honest with yourself. We are broken people living in a fractured world.
This, my friends, is why we desperately need the gospel.
Although God did not give us written accounts of how to answer these specific parenting decisions, we can still use the gospel to guide us through these questions. I have learned to process these questions by using a method called Creation-Fall-Redemption-Consummation. If you haven't yet, you need to check out the ladies over at Risen Motherhood. I first learned this process by listening to their podcast a few years ago. (I will link to some of my favorite episodes at the end.)
So let's dive into motherhood with a gospel perspective. The answers are not always found on the paper, most often they will be revealed through our hearts.
Creation
This method of discernment always starts with creation. How did our Heavenly Father intend for us to be? In the case of motherhood, we can read right there in chapter 1 of Genesis that God made man and women, declaring them both very good. His mission for them was simple: have babies, take care of the land and animals, eat all the food you want (no GMOs in this garden). I can imagine that childbirth was not painful. The children of Eden would be safe to roam freely without the need for daycare. Eating in the garden would have been the ultimate farm to table buffet. Life would be free from spousal arguments. There would be no meltdowns over which bedtime snack to choose from little people with big emotions.
Fall
Then it would have all crumbled in the fall. When Eve would take that first bite of the forbidden fruit. The way that I like to correlate this act to motherhood is this; She was looking for the answers. Just like we do when we spend endless hours searching Google for the best diet to feed our 6-month-old who is just starting solids. Or like when we spend hours on Instagram just scrolling and find a mom who has designed the most beautiful Montessori toy display, that we attempt to do the same thing in our playroom.
Eve was looking for answers when the only answers she ever needed were already given to her from her creator. Through the fall, sin entered the world and now we have to fight to keep out those gremlins who creep in and tell us that another mom is doing it better or she is more put together or she has more control over her 3-year-old than we could ever even fake with our own wild and free child.
Through the fall we doubt, constantly.
Through the fall we now have a hard time loving our fellow mommas. We let our feelings of inadequacy create a barrier between us. We only let her in so far so she can think we have it all together...hello IG, I see you, and I know you are only showing me the most pretty parts of her life!
Through the fall we judge how others choose to live their lives. Thinking if she doesn't care enough to feed her kids greens at every meal, then she must be a bad mom. It may not always seem like we let these thoughts into our minds, but they are they. The fall has broken us. We find our hope and validation, not in how we spend the mundane moments of our days, but how others view our lives.
Redemption
But God knew we couldn't live like this. Constantly searching, comparing, and competing. He knew we would need help to guide our hearts to him, to the real source of hope and validation. So he sent his only son, Jesus Christ to show us the way. Through Jesus, we see how to love those who are different than us. We see how he loved the outcasts of society, how tender and patient he was with those who were different than him.
Jesus absorbed our curse, our sins. We no longer need to feel the need to judge the mom beside us. We don't need to find our worth in how we birth our children, how we feed them, or how we choose to educate them.
We still cannot find these answers in the Bible but we can look within us to decide. Our heart's intentions tell us whether the choices we are making are for or against Christ. Are you sending your child to a private school so you can boast to your neighbor? Are you continually checking Facebook to see how many likes and comments your 30-week baby bump is getting? (...because society tells us likes = worth, right?) These heart intentions are of the world and we are told over and over again in scripture to not put our hope in things "of the world" but to choose to glorify Christ instead.
Through redemption, we can rest in the arms of our creator finding our hope in him alone. We can make choices for our family...quite possibly still being judged by the world...but know that if our heart's intentions are good and pleasing to the Lord, if we are making these choices because we believe they are for the good of our family, we can rest in them.
I find my hope in Jesus, in trying my hardest to glorify him in every moment of my motherhood journey.
Consummation
Someday, we will be lifted to a life where we don't have to choose between an epidural or natural birth, breast or bottle, public or private. When our redeemer comes back to join us, we will be set free of all the decisions, worry, judgment, and fear that motherhood brings.
Already but not yet
We are living in the already, but not yet. We have the life-saving sacrifice of Christ, yet our hearts are still under the curse. We live with the residual effects of an act set into motion long before we walked the earth.
In recent posts, I shared the way we feel about childbirth and the practices we have done, but those choices may not be what is best for your family...and that is okay. I wish I could say that I wasn't nervous about putting out there some of the decisions we made, but I was...I still am. Why? Because living in the "not yet" means there will be people who believe my motives are impure, meant to shame mommas who choose differently than I did. But that is, yet again, one more effect of the curse on our hearts.
We strategically withhold fellowship from people who disobey our parenting rules or make us feel like less than amazing moms because compromising feels like failing in the job at which we most want to succeed. -Risen Motherhood: Gospel Hope for Everyday Moments
The quote above beautifully embodies how we feel as mommas in our Western culture. We take so much pride in our individuality that seeing life lived from another perspective feels threatening. We see a mom at the park giving her 2-year-old gummy bears at 9 am as a snack and we maybe don't judge her outwardly but we say a silent prayer that our own 2-year-old doesn't see the gummies because that's not how I parent.
It is our heart behind the words or feelings that can be damaging to our relationship with other mommas and thus, damaging our relationship with Jesus.
Jesus embodied the grace and reconciliation we are called to show our fellow mommas (and daddies!). He walked with sinners who did not follow God's rules. Momma...he walks with you and me. Those sinners, they are you and I.
We are Saul (Acts 9), persecuting those around us who believe differently than we do. We are the woman at the well (John 4), sinners in need of grace and forgiveness. We are the rich young ruler (Mark 10), called to give up all our worldly possessions but utterly fail! Yet Jesus called these men and women to be a part of his kingdom.
Are we to dismiss the mom beside us because her beliefs challenge our own? I think you know the answer to this question.
Good sense makes one slow to anger and it is his glory to overlook an offense. -Proverbs 19:11
If what a mom in your life is choosing to do is not a harmful sin, can we give her grace and move on? Can we love her anyway? Can we assume her intentions for her child are good and pure, even when we don't understand? Can we still be in fellowship with her despite our differences?
Motherhood does not have to be a competition, it should be a community where we can support and love despite differences.
Risen Motherhood
I love these women! I was told about this podcast during my maternity leave with baby #2 and it saved me. I know that sounds crazy, but hearing from women who were struggling with similar things as I was and taking a gospel approach to discerning them blew my mind. They discussed topics I typically would have gone to Google for and left very unsatisfied, confused, and feeling "less than" compared to other moms. Taking a gospel perspective to tackle real mom struggles changes everything.
Here are a few of my favorite episodes in case you want to check it out!
See you soon friend,
Remember, I do not have this. Neither do you. But God does.
Something We Are Loving Right Now!
This will be the first week where the thing I am loving is directly tied to this post. I have been greatly influenced by the women over at Risen Motherhood and I wish you could know them too! Their book is absolutely fantastic, easy to read, and probably more helpful...no...definitely more helpful than most parenting books out there. I strongly recommend picking it up from Amazon or if you are into audiobooks, you can also find it on Audible. These women walk through many of the difficulties mommas face and tackle them from a gospel perspective...hearts full of grace and the Word.
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