Motherhood: Living an Abundant Life

Motherhood often feels like a tiresome and thankless job—like moms are always getting the short end of the stick. Eating your child’s leftovers, picking up after everyone, getting less sleep, not being able to drink your coffee until it gets cold, the list goes on. Seems bleak doesn’t it? 

Mothering takes an enormous amount of energy, giving of oneself, and sacrifice. Sometimes, this makes it hard to see the beauty in this God-given role.

However, the truth is that God’s ways are higher than our ways, His plans are way better than our own. And although it may feel like being a mom is comparable to a soldier in the trenches, He promises us so much more. A life of abundance—through Him. The question we have to ask ourselves is are we open to receiving His invitation?

God promises us abundance.

In John 10:10, Jesus heals a man who was born blind, and then He says, “ I came that they may have life and have it abundantly”. I believe the abundance He’s speaking about in this situation isn’t about wealth or earthly riches, but an abundance of the heart and spirit. 

Can you imagine how much this blind man’s life was flipped upside down after he gained his eyesight? Surely he was rejoicing, but he didn’t win the lotto or become someone of notable societal status overnight. He was still the same man with the same clothes on his back; the only difference was he gained a fresh new perspective on life. His demeanor and spirit was changed by the healing of his eyesight.

As moms, there can be so many things we wish we could change to make our situations and circumstances easier, better, and more ideal. If only we could have a perfect child who never talked back, or if only my kid ate all their vegetables at dinner, or if only we had our dream kitchen, then we would have made it. Jesus’ promise to us in this passage is that we would experience abundance through the renewing of our minds and hearts, not our checklists and false expectations. What He’s saying here is, to have Jesus is to have abundance. Not the perfect house or the perfect kids. To have Jesus residing in our home (or in our hearts) is what is going to allow us to embrace contentment and joy in whatever circumstance we have before us. 

God has called us (as moms) for a great purpose.

Being a perfectionist is a vice of mine--and it wasn’t until motherhood arrived that it struck me hard. Moms are not called to perfection. Despite what Instagram tells you, it’s just not humanly possible. As Christian mothers, we are called to the faithful pursuit of imitating Christ. 

But how are we to imitate Christ as mothers? As a mom of 2 (almost 3), I’m technically still in the trenches of the early stages. Soon, I’ll have another tiny human attached to me and diapers to change. Between my foreseeable lack of sleep and juggling 2 active children at home, it’s easy for me to just mentally check out and go into survival mode. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with “survival mode”, especially in certain seasons of life, I have to remind myself that just because I’m not pursuing a picture perfect life, doesn’t mean I have to be living a life of defeat. 

If I am to faithfully pursue becoming an imitator of Christ, it means I am offering myself to my family no matter what season we’re in. If all I can offer is frozen dinners and a messy house, I am going to do it with the bigger picture in mind of preserving my energy and mental health for my family so I don’t have an emotional meltdown trying to do everything. Receiving my calling as a mother means embracing every season of life and inviting my children to live in it as well. Instead of trying to wrangle our circumstances to fit into our ideals of what a perfect mom would do, let's welcome them instead and let them teach us how to be more like Christ. Not only does this process refine us, but it allows our children to be witnesses in seeing how God works through our lives.

God created us to behold Him.

Growing up in church we had a worship leader that would always declare to the congregation that we would “behold and gaze upon the beauty of the Lord!” Those words had a nice ring to it, but I was never really able to conceptualize its meaning. My mind would jump to a picture of rolling green hills from The Sound Of Music. It was beautiful, but it didn’t speak to my heart, it wasn’t personal. I was lost as to how to connect or reconcile beholding God’s beauty to my personal life. 

The dictionary definition of behold says it is to see or observe (a thing or person, especially a remarkable or impressive one). The specificity of someone or something remarkable and impressive hits the nail on the head when I think of Jesus. He is our ultimate example of someone who is remarkable, impressive, and sinless. Beholding Christ, is beholding His word. I need to be in His word and observe how His word works in my life. 

In Luke 6:40 Jesus says, “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they both fall into a pit?”. I would not be able to lead my children in full confidence if I am not fully pursuing Christ and beholding His word for myself. We were made to worship and behold Him; it is part of our calling. 

This sense of beholding in the season of motherhood is a tricky one. Because beholding almost always implies that we’re gazing at something beautiful and worthy or our attention. However, the reality is that motherhood can look messy. But God calls us to watch, to observe and to pay attention to how He moves throughout this season of life. Behold His good gifts to you and your family, pay attention to the miracles He performs, watch closely as He grows in your children. As you watch and pay close attention to even the smallest things (or people) in your life, you will notice over time how God is revealing himself to you and how He is transforming you to be more like Him. 

Our heavenly father is waiting for us to welcome and behold this life as a mother. His promises, His abundance, His beauty is all here right now for the taking. As mothers, what we need to do is make a choice — to receive the blessings and the gifts He promises us and to embrace His calling to make us more like Christ.