"Your body is the first thing any child of man ever wanted. Therefore dispose yourself to be loved, to be wanted, to be available. Be there for them with a vengeance. Be a gracious, bending woman. Incline your ear, your heart, your hands to them.... To be a Mother is to be the sacrament - the effective symbol - of place. Mothers do not make homes, they are our home." from Bed and Board, Robert Farrar Capon

Thursday, September 12, 2013

He Carries Our Kids Too

Someone just said to me in an email that she is now realizing how life-long parenting is. You go from mostly physical work in the care of your children as infants and toddlers, and then move into the mental and spiritual labor of bearing them in their youth into adulthood. (The latter seems to be by far the harder job, and my oldest is only just turning sixteen next month, so I have a long way to go.)

It seems that as your children grow up, you grow up.  You are no longer the same person. If, by patient continuance and repentance, and in God's grace, you take up your cross daily, deny yourself, following Jesus, then you learn the long slow way how to love and long-suffer with people, especially those closest, in ways that could never be explained to you beforehand.  

“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
And not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Surely they may forget,
Yet I will not forget you."
Isaiah 49:15

Loving and bringing up children is indeed a lifelong business; I believe one of the hardest. In fact it would be too heavy without One who takes our burdens, bears our griefs, and carries our sorrows with us and for us.

Once, when I was upset and despairing about how my children would turn out, my pastor said to me,
"Don't be so proud as to think it's all up to you.  Leave some room for the grace of God, will ya?"

5 comments:

  1. Amen. Thank you for posting this so us younger mothers can have hope. :-)

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  2. How did you know I needed to hear this particularly this week? Thank you.

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  3. We all want our children to "turn out right" but having a 34yr old down to 13yrs... the rightness we really want is for them to be found again having "no rightness of their own" and that is a true work of God. He works in mysterious ways and we do our best (or what we think is our best) and in the end, like you said.. Leave room for the grace of God. He is faithful and I want to constantly have my eyes put back in my ears and realize again that Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God which is stronger for me in my brother or sister than anything I come up with. So Thank you for sharing ... what an encouragement. Jo Martinez

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    1. *the rightness we really want is for them to be found again having "no rightness of their own" and that is a true work of God.*

      Thank you for this Jo. What a good reminder.

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  4. This is so true. "as your children grow up, you grow up. You are no longer the same person." I am definitely not the same person I was when my first baby was born 37 years ago. And I'm very glad.

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