(A)Typical Woman by Abigail Dodds

Author:Abigail Dodds
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL012000/REL012130/REL023000
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2019-01-31T05:00:00+00:00

10

Mothering Women

The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 1 Timothy 1:14

If God gives you children, you can be assured he’s called you to it. It is no accident. This calling of motherhood is one not of broad spreading but of deep rootedness. It is the call that passes the baton of faith not just side to side or peer to peer but down through time, entrusting it to another generation. It is also a call of bottomless loyalty to the people closest to us. We spend ourselves for our children in a way that we don’t for others. They hold priority in our lives, because they, like us with our heavenly Father, are utterly needful of us.

One of a mother’s most difficult—nay, impossible, apart from God’s help—tasks is weaning her children and transferring their source of life and comfort and home to another—to God. That is the goal of every Christian mother. In all her loving and comforting and making home, she simply is a pointer to a better home, a lasting one, one where she already has one foot in the door and by her goodness is testifying to the eternal goodness.

Christian mothers are declared good because of Jesus. When God saved us, he gave us his perfectly good Son, and now that we have Jesus, we have goodness! When Jesus ascended into heaven, he left the Holy Spirit with us, to dwell in us. That goodness is a fruit of the Spirit seems forgotten by so many of us as we joke about our badness or lament in self-pity about it to anyone who will listen (Gal. 5:22). We’d rather celebrate our failures as a need for more grace than to do as the psalmist instructed:

Trust in the Lord and do good.

Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. (Ps. 37:3)

And in what seems like willful misunderstanding, the claim to goodness is often immediately rebuffed as works righteousness. But it’s quite the opposite. It’s the refusal to continue in sin so that grace may abound. Our feet-on-the-ground, dirt-under-the-fingernails good work is evidence of the finished work of Christ, not earning of our salvation.

God Answers the Unasked Questions

When God gives us children, he answers a lot of questions in our lives—even ones we may not have thought to ask. Questions like: What should I do with my life? How much sleep do I need? What’s it like to give up my body for someone? How selfish am I, really? Do I trust my husband as a father? How weird am I about food? What strong opinions do I have about clothing? Sleepovers? What are my views on education? Extracurricular activities?

Being a mom brings it all to the surface; it often reveals a more truthful version of ourselves, not because we were previously being untruthful but because we are now shaping a life not only for ourselves but for someone else. We are making decisions every day that can and often will impact another person’s entire existence.

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