It has taken me time to find words to put to the day to day of this new assignment of motherhood. Of course motherhood is not a new assignment for me, but the day to day realities of motherhood are quite new. Its the assignment I’ve been longing for, waiting for. The last few years the assignment has been that of a bereaved mother, stewarding the story of our girls well, it is still this but now there is another. And his story is still being written. So my assignment is not to steward his story, but him. And that is new, filled with new joys and new angst.
Like David, whose assignment went from being a shepherd, to fugitive, to King, all the Lord is asking is that we be faithful. To go from a schedule full of investing my life in other women, to traveling across the globe to be a keynote speaker, to changing dirty diapers and trying to remember what day it is are vastly different assignments and yet the same faithfulness is required of each one. As I prepared to speak at the conference, there was faithfulness in preparing, praying. There was faithfulness in engaging with others even when sickness overwhelmed my body. Faithfulness in trusting God would give me the strength I needed, when I needed it. That He would form in me the words to say, the heart to love.
Is it not the same with a child? Faithfulness in preparing, not a talk but his milk. Faithfulness in praying, not for all the women I will speak to but for all the ways God will work in and through my son. Faithfulness in engaging with my son, when I’m tired and don’t feel well or when I just want to get something else done. Even now, he’s beginning to squirm and this window of time where I long to just sit and write is quickly closing. Faithful. Faithful in the moments God gives me to write, to be with Him and faithful to respond to the needs of my son. Trusting God in the middle of the night when I can barely keep my eyes open is no different then trusting God when my body is protesting coherent thoughts and I’m about to get up and speak in front of hundreds, thousands of women or just one. Each requires trust that the Lord will give what I need, when I need it, that He will help me to love my child and eventually more children when it’s easy and especially when it’s hard. That it would be His love and not my own.
He’s back asleep, my window to write hasn’t closed fully but will soon. It has been more than a laying down of expectations for each day, but for each moment. I have struggled to be faithful in many moments, I get frustrated when I can’t get done what I want to get done… have I asked the Lord what things He actually wants me to get done? Not as often as I’d like to admit. I’ve often just done what I have wanted. I have struggled to trust the Lord in the moments He’s given me, choosing to zone out instead of engage with God, with my husband, with my son. Fatigue washing over my body and getting the best of me many days. And yet with all the emotions this new assignment of being a mom to this precious boy has brought its one I’m so thankful for, one I love and yet one I am seeing how much I still need Jesus to help me steward well. My prayer is “Lord, more than anything help me be faithful with the new assignment you have given me. In grief and in joy, in life and in death, let me be faithful. Let me walk with you. Let me steward well whatever this life brings.”
- A Time to be Silent and a Time to Speak - October 29, 2020
- Teaching Them to Hope, Birthday After Birthday. - January 15, 2020
- A Taste of Hope Fulfilled – Briella Dawn’s Birth Story - August 3, 2018
