Preparing for Motherhood

A few months back, I wrote a few posts in a series on preparing for motherhood. I included thoughts on avoiding debt and managing your money well and the value of motherhood.

The concept of this series is that God provides different seasons in our lives for different things. I am currently in a season of small children and it is the most tiring, rewarding, joyous, laborious, and full season of life that I have faced so far. (I am not arguing that this time will always be classified this way, that is just how I see it now compared with life up to this point. Who knows, I may decide that being the mother of teenagers is the most tiring, rewarding, etc....but I have a few more years to get there and then I'll have to compare.)

While I feel that I was more prepared to be a mom than many of my friends, I still know that I was woefully short of being prepared. I have actually had some friends (several) tell me that they just were not made to be mothers! And while I understand the feelings of inadequacy that would lead someone to say that, it is just so wrong. God's design for married women (barring the consequences of living in a fallen world—disease, infertility, etc.) is motherhood. It is evident in our biological design and throughout the creation story as He instructed Adam and Eve to be “fruitful and multiply.” And we all know the NT prescriptives to women that focus on the homefront. Even the Proverbs 31 woman, who is sometimes erroneously used as an example of a working woman, is busy at home!

There is much in motherhood that runs directly counter to our culture's roles and priorities for value in a woman. Motherhood calls for one to die to self, while the world tells us to live to our full potential. We must embrace the promise of Matthew 10:39 that, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” It is precisely in the sweet service of caring for my family that God is present and active in me.

Over Christmas, I had a heated discussion with a family member about womanhood. She had commented on a couple that we both knew who was having trouble in their marriage because the wife had recently started working and the husband was feeling like he wasn't getting enough attention. She said that the problem was that the husband was controlling and didn't like his wife doing other things. My family member said, “Well, she should be able to do what makes her happy, what fulfills her.” I made the point that by marrying, this woman had agreed to love and serve her husband, and if he felt like he wasn't getting enough attention then he wasn't and that was what mattered. I even made the shocking statement that I thought women should mainly take care of things at home and that men were responsible for working to care for the family.

The point that Joe made later (he had been quietly observing our interchange) and that I wish I had thought of at the time was that it was exactly in service, in giving up “me” for “another,” in the submission of my will to the Creator, that I will truly be fulfilled—and filled with Christ.