Hi Friends,
I saw a video this week where a woman demonstrates “one simple tip to keeping your home spotless”. In the scene, she ushers her children and husband out the front door, and quickly closes it behind them.
Ha! Brilliant!
We chuckle at memes like this because of the seed of truth underneath them. There is so much pressure on mothers, self-imposed and otherwise, to do it all: keep a perfect home, advance her career, remember all the milestones, volunteer at all the things.
We read the million parenting books, pulling from each one, hoping not to mess up our kids all the while knowing we will miss the mark.
It has me wondering: what does God value in a mother?
As the only person in the world who chose His own family, what did He choose?
You might think He would choose to be child 2 or 3 in the family. Let them work out their parenting style on someone else first.
Maybe He’d choose a well respected family line: one with generational wealth and respectability.
But He chose Mary—a young girl with no experience in having a family. Too young to have much experience in anything, really.
However, there is one thing she had:
Mary had a heart fully surrendered to God.
God chose the woman who said, “Be it unto me according to Your word” to raise the Man who would say, “Not My will but Yours be done”.
It is not wealth or opportunity or comforts that are ideal conditions in which to raise children. Perhaps the most important environment is one of surrender.
Maybe preparing our children for their future has less to do with getting them in front of all the right STEM curriculums or forking over enough money to be in the top sports leagues.
Maybe it’s not even agonizing over exposing them to the right Bible teachings at the right time.
Maybe our greatest gift to our children is raising them in a home where we face the future with our eyes on Jesus and our hands wide open.
Lord, help me to live before Your eyes. Let all my life say “Be it unto me according to Your word”.
–Anna