While motherhood often brings unexpected challenges, God can accomplish unexpected good and glory in our lives through them.

God uses even our uncertain steps to sanctify us and teach us to walk by faith.

Motherhood isn’t just about training up our children. It’s about God training us as his children to look to Christ and to look like Christ.

Keep applying the gospel again and again—moment-by-moment, prayer-by-prayer, conflict-by-conflict—it focuses our hearts more fully on Christ and conforms us to his image.

We often spend our days believing we can mother in our own strength. But it’s okay to acknowledge our weakness—that’s when we see our need for Christ.

When guilt paralyzes us, the gospel frees us to move forward into repentance and joy.

Motherhood works towards something. We just need to ask: is it toward our ends or God’s?

Christ didn’t suffer on the cross so we could just survive motherhood. Rather, he defeated death so we could live as righteous ones. As we choose to serve our families with joy and out of love for God, we are transformed by grace into Christ-likeness—yes, through car pick up lines, nighttime wake ups, and toothpaste spills.

We all know that motherhood is so much more than social media showcases. It’s more than the bursts of laughter captured in a well-lit scene, houses that are never messy, walls that are never sticky, and hot steaming coffee that magically appears in bed next to a sleeping babe.

Some of the most genuine frames of motherhood are those you cannot capture. I’m talking about the early morning wake-up to hold up your daughter’s hair as she battles a stomach bug. Or the Holy Spirit-given fruit of patience budding in you as you break up sibling rivalry for the fifth time this week.

Social media is not wrong in and of itself, but for many, it may be the water needed to grow seeds of comparison, discontent, and envy. Today alone you probably learned where Sarah just traveled, and what an awesome mom Jane is for feeding her child steel cut oats and kale daily. With every scroll and every click we are depositing some knowledge into our brains, and what fills our minds will direct our thought life and actions.

Sometimes we just need that simple reminder that true joy doesn’t exist apart from Jesus.

The bottom line is this: forego the fairytale picture of mom-ing so many project through the screen, because this will not sustain you in the trenches of motherhood. If we want to mom well, we need to know Christ well, because it is He who has the power to transform us, our homes, and one another.

Like anyone, moms are susceptible to the conforming pressures of the world. The world tries to squeeze us into its mold like the play dough in our playrooms. 

Conformity comes from the word for “masquerade” – “to wear a mask” or “play a part.”...When our doxology and theology is conformed to the world, it gives the outward appearance of substance without an inward reality...

As we yield our minds to be renewed in the truth, our doxology and theology are transformed. The word reorients and realigns everything we think and do.

Transformation is radical, and sometimes messy, but in the end, glorious! The goal of transformation is to look like Jesus. The word of God (theology) reveals the glory of God (doxology) and the Spirit of God transforms us to be like the Son of God (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).

We are continually becoming what we will be – and what we are becoming is what we behold.

When I find myself losing my temper with my children more often than normal, it can be easy for me to spiral downward, feeling guilt, condemnation and listening to the lies from Satan that I cannot change.

But when I believe this lie, what's really happening is I'm believing that I am beyond the reach of God's grace – I'm believing that the cross wasn't enough.