The UNsuper mom

Our first Sunday at church as a family of eight I heard it for the first time. “What you guys are doing is amazing. You’re like super woman.” I’m not the mom that usually receives such acknowledgement. I don’t have super powers for organization, and I haven’t mastered the art of effortless meal planning. Our home is comfortable, but you’d never find it on someone’s Pinterest board. I teach, and train, and reteach and retrain. I do dishes and laundry and long for uninterrupted showers, and the rhythm of my motherhood has always been perfectly ordinary.

“Amazing?” “Super woman?” Walking in the door with six kids turns heads. But, when people find out that my family’s oldest three children were adopted from foster care the people drop their jaws too. When we welcomed three more children into our family I had no idea we would become objects of such speculation. In fact, my past motherhood experiences had prepared me for skepticism, people asking if we had “really thought this through.” This was something else entirely.

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Our motherhood can be full of this similar kind of well-meaning hero worship. We all know a mom with more kids than we do, who just seems to get more done during her days. There’s a working mom next door who provides more for her family than we do with our elbows deep in dirty bathwater and extra laundry from this week’s stomach bug. That foster mom we heard about in church loves kids she didn’t even birth, and we still struggle daily to talk kindly to the three year old who will not obey. These are extraordinary moms, doing extraordinary gospel work, while we struggle in our unimportant, and dare I say, even unfulfilling motherhood.

Hero worship is our constant companion as we scroll our Instagram and Facebook feeds. Discontentment looms in our hearts as we hear stories from the pulpit about missionaries abroad and with tear-filled eyes read articles about cancer, and families who have finally born their long awaited and prayed for babies. We forget the neighbor we are called to love doesn’t just share a fence line, but walls in our home, and that it takes the same kind of obedience to forsake all our earthly treasures as it does to whisper in the quiet, “Lord, give me grace.”

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Paul tells us “We have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ” (Romans 1:5b-6). We have received grace to bring about obedience, not for our sake, but for his. Even if such obedience doesn’t draw a tear from watching bystanders. The fulfillment of our motherhood doesn’t depend on likes, pats on the back, or gold stars. The value of our motherhood is, and has always been, a person—Jesus Christ.

We often ask “When will my work matter?” But weary mom, the strong oak trees of our faithfulness grow from tiny seeds of simple obedience. There is no such thing as meaningless or insignificant obedience when done unto the Lord. God has laid out and prepared good works for us to walk in, if only we would take the steps.[1]I remember so clearly the first steps of my daughter as she wobbled back and forth unsteadily and a bit unsure. Obedience is like this. One clumsy step at a time, as we teeter and totter on the path laid before us. And like our own children, these timid steps become sure with practice, and in time the steps turn to sprints.

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There is something deeply broken that makes us want more from our stories, something that needs redemption. Eve wanted more from the garden than to enjoy all the fruit God had given her, and to do the work of simple obedience prepared for her.[2]Our story is the same. Eve was created for hero worship, and so are we. The hero we need doesn’t have the secret to potty training, or fitting in her Bible reading between school drop offs. She doesn’t wear a smaller size than you or lead worship from the stage on Sunday mornings. The hero you were made to worship walked in the works prepared for him too, and they led him to his own tree of faithfulness.[3] This is our motherhood calling—obedience to death. But like Christ, our motherhood doesn’t stay dead. He brings new life, and suddenly the burden that would seek to kill, Jesus uses to save.

Jesus had twelve friends who walked in wobbly steps of obedience, and sometimes disobedience. Twelve ordinary guys who collected taxes, sat on fishing boats, or helped the sick as they followed their teacher with human faltering feet into uncharted waters. And when they wavered, Jesus stood firm. Their stories we know well, not because of their faithfulness but because his. The lives and stories of the faithful should draw us to worship, but not human worship. We were created for something so much greater. Will you be glad for your greatest to worship, to be your humblest obedience?

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So sisters let’s walk together. One wobbly step forward as we choose a joyful heart on days we’ve slept too little with the baby who needs too much. Let our feet find their footing when we hold our tongue as the anger comes too quickly. Our shuffling baby steps of faith as we say “later” to laundry to spend time in the Word that waters our soul. Will these seemingly inconsequential choices be enough for us? Can ordinary obedience to our one true hero be enough reward for our hungry appetites? Can we water the seeds of faithfulness hidden beneath the surface, and trust our maker to take them to the skies?

[1]Ephesians 2:10

[2]Genesis 3:1-6

[3]John 14:31