It hit me over Tex-Mex after a doctor’s appointment last week. I paused from my burrito, looked at Jeff and said, Can you believe we are going to have 4 kids? Can you believe we have 3?
I’m 37 weeks pregnant and baby girl could arrive any time. My doctor jokes about how I’m a “pro” going into my fourth labor and delivery, but the truth is, I don’t feel much more prepared for this baby than I felt 7+ years ago. If anything, three kids deep, I feel less sufficient for the task. Weeks (or days) away from meeting our fourth, I don’t feel as capable as I might have thought I’d be by now.
It’s not just the number of kids, really. (Though when I was pregnant with our first I couldn’t imagine how people made it past one.) I remember being discharged from the hospital with our firstborn and thinking, “That’s it? They’re just going to let us take her?” That we are allowed to be parents at all is still as shocking to me. As a mom of three, the enormity of the task of motherhood continues to dawn on me daily in new ways as does my inability to carry it out as I ought.
There is much more mystery in parenting than I had anticipated. I never expected to always have the right answers, to know what to do at all times, but I don’t think I ever realized how incredible it would be to be firsthand witness to a child’s life. As parents, there’s no one else who knows your children as well as you do and it’s easy to start feeling like you’ve got them figured out. At the same time, there is so much we are still learning about our children, so much hidden in the depths of who they are that we are only beginning to see.
It’s not just that each child has a unique combination of personality and preference, strengths and weaknesses. It’s been fun to watch these aspects of their personhood be revealed, to learn who’s good at what, to be able to anticipate their different responses to circumstances, and to know how to help them differently. But there is a deeper reality that has become more apparent to me these days. That is, the fact that my children are daily interacting with the world— and with me— as embodied souls.
It’s not that I didn’t know this before, that my children have souls, but the reality of it is becoming increasingly evident to me. I see it as we talk and they give me insight on how they interpret the world. I see it as they struggle to do good, as they grapple with their fears. I see it as they become aware of the brokenness in and around them.
I see it when one of them calls from the bed, “Mom, I have a question— it’s a Bible question!” It turns out she doesn’t just want to know some facts from Scripture, but what to do with her knowledge of falling short of God’s standard. We sit and talk through how difficult it is to be sorry and how hard it is to forgive.
The whole day, I have interacted with her primarily as caretaker and in-charge momma, now we speak as fellow struggling sinner-saints. We talk about how Paul wrote about the waging war inside us, of not doing the good he wanted to do, of doing the evil he didn’t want. I struggle too, I tell her, and we will continue to until we see Jesus. But he forgives us. He can change us. “I think I get it now,” she says sweetly. We hug and say goodnight. I have not been granted a chance to hear her thoughts and feelings, I have been gifted a chance to glimpse the inner workings of her soul.
My children are immortal beings with eternal souls. I would say this takes my breath away, but I don’t want to give the wrong impression. It feels less like witnessing a pretty sunset at the beach and more like standing at the precipice of a mountain. The view is incredible but my sense of helplessness at the top of sheer rock is almost overwhelming. To be entrusted with the care of souls is beautiful and terrifying at the same time. It is a holy task.
When I spoke to my daughter, we weren’t just interacting as thinkers. I couldn’t just operate out of my knowledge of religious truth, philosophy, or child psychology. Parenting is soul work. As she tried to make sense of what she knows and feels to be right, her own experience of being unable to carry it out, and her fears about the implications of her failure, her heart was making sense of truths with eternal consequences. My children are daily learning to live their lives before the face of God, of the reality of sinful nature, and hopefully, learning the wonder of the gospel.
Thus it is with fear and trembling that I prepare to welcome our newest family member into the world. I am not a pro. I could never wear any motivational mom gear because I am not #momstrong or a #bossmom by any measure. I don’t say this just because I know I should, but because I feel my own insufficiency more deeply and the weighty task of caring for these souls to be increasingly heavy. Yet I think there may be one thing I dare say I have grown in since not-so-baby-anymore #1, and that is turning to the one who is sufficient.
Many years ago, I may have crumbled into discouragement and fear at this growing sense of the enormity of motherhood, but by grace, I am learning to lean on grace. I have grown a bit, I hope, in running more quickly to my eternal refuge and help, to the one who welcomes weak moms and those who feel like they don’t know what they’re doing. I am recognizing more quickly that as I start feeling like panicking from the heights, that this is a call to trust. It is a call not to dwell on my lack but at his willingness to give grace, to finish my declaration of weakness with James 4:6’s but he gives more grace.
I have found there are one of two great temptations we are faced with when standing before tasks too great for us. First, the world would encourage us to turn inward at this point, to self-help and positive hashtags. But many of us have fallen enough times into the foolish self-confidence of Peter, who after declaring that he was different than all the other disciples, that he’d never deny Christ, found himself weeping at the end of the night. We have had enough of our own declarations of strength and subsequent failures.
The second temptation though, when we find ourselves trembling, is to try to pass off our unbelief as humility. Just as as soon-to-be-king Saul hid among the luggage even after God made clear his calling, we may walk in something that looks like humility, but actually is unwillingness to trust in his grace.
We, however, are called to a third way. To declare as Paul did, that though we are weak, our God is strong. As Christians we are freed not only to admit, but boast in our weaknesses and hear our God declare the sufficiency of his grace over us. His power is made perfect in our lack, so we stand confident in the strength he promises to give us to face the tasks he calls us to. Whatever your particular temptation in the face of God’s calling, know this — God gives more grace. He delights to show himself merciful to the humble and needy, and when you turn to him in your weakness, he receives glory by showing the sufficiency of his grace.
So here I am, in the last stretch of pregnancy, still learning to trust God with the life of my baby. Only instead of just wondering whether her heart will beat until we hold her in our arms (which I still grapple with anxiety about), I am trusting God for grace to care for her soul and the souls of her siblings.
I don’t know what you are being called to these days, whether it’s parenting or something else, but I do know that our sense of inadequacy and insufficiency often serves to remind us that God calls us to holy tasks too great for us. Maybe the reason why your particular task seems so huge is simply because it is huge. To live in obedience to God, to love as he loves, to trust and obey, to persevere through suffering– these are no small things whatever the context.
Whether in church, work, friendship, or family, we need not be strong on our own. We need not cower because of our inability. Though we may stand trembling at the precipices of God’s tremendous calling for our lives, we can trust. Fully aware of the beauty and enormity of the tasks he has granted us, we look to him. Truly, our tasks are great and we really are insufficient for them, but even so, he gives more grace.
P.S. I’ve been away from the blog for a while because I’ve been working on another writing project– but I hope to be posting more regularly again! They’ll probably be shorter posts so I can get them out more often, but hopefully they will be still be helpful.
P.P.S. At the advice of a friend, I’m starting an Instagram account for this blog that I plan on using more regularly. If you’re on Instagram you can start following @keepingheartblog.
Keeping Heart 