Fearlessly Feminine by Jani Ortlund

Author:Jani Ortlund [Ortlund Jani]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-78118-5
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

Are you willing to pay the price? Kids cost, but they’re worth it.

My friend Suzanne proves how much our children deserve our best. Suzanne is a creative, energetic, compassionate young woman who developed a sterling reputation as a student teacher and teacher’s aide in a Chicago district where positions are highly coveted. She became a personal friend when she discipled our daughter, Krista, during Krista’s high school years.

When Suzanne and her husband, Scott, had their first baby, they made the hard decision to have Suzanne leave the marketplace to mother full-time. What is the result? Five-year-old Tyler is an obedient, confident, bright boy—a joy to be around. And three-year-old Krista (our daughter’s namesake), is a secure, impishly tenacious, totally irresistible little girl. Both Tyler and Krista have strong wills and have required hard work, patience, and untold sacrifices on the part of their parents. But if you could spend an afternoon with these little ones, as my family loves to do, you would see the imprint of their mother on them, and you would delight in it. Has it been easy? Definitely not. Suzanne has felt depleted, isolated, and financially strapped at times. But to her the price has been worth it. She could never replace those years with her babies, nor would she want to. How much value would any other success hold if she failed as a mother?

Someone is going to be influencing your child during those formative preschool years. Someone is going to be inculcating values and imprinting standards on that impressionable young soul. Let it be you. Make the effort to create an atmosphere where faith and obedience can be nurtured, where love and security are readily accessible. This takes time—continual exposure and intervention. It isn’t easy. But God’s purpose for us as His daughters is not freedom from the difficulties in life. His goal is to make us like Christ and, through us, to mark our children with His beauty. He intends to conform us to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29). What is that image? Philippians 2 tells us that Christ was obedient to God’s call, humbling Himself, considering others before Himself, all the way to the cross. Christ Himself said, “And whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:43–44).

More than anywhere else, motherhood is where a woman learns to serve. It reminds me of the toddler who, while looking at his parents’ wedding pictures, asked his daddy, “So, is that the day Mommie came to work for us?” We feel like that at times, don’t we? Like slaves. I wonder if we resist our duties as moms, paying someone else to do it, because it is such hard work. We resent being the one “on call,” who rarely gets a break.

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