My husband and I host a weekly small group comprised of eight married couples who are all under the age of 35. At the close of each of our meetings, the girls and guys divide to share more intimately and to pray for one another specifically. Our semester’s praises and prayer requests were all over the map, especially in the realm of fertility and childbearing, and we rarely left our time together without the shedding of tears.

At times I feared that our group would not survive because of the fact that we were walking triggers for one another. We fought feelings of guilt in weeping and feelings of contempt in our rejoicing.

But instead, God caused this community to abound in love for each other. I witnessed the beauty that emerges in the tension when weeping and rejoicing are happening all at once.

We know that just as Christ assigns our roles, he is sovereign over our experiences. We can trust that whether our families are growing or we are in seasons of waiting or mourning, there is nothing that happens outside of his sovereign will, and that he is working all things for our good.

When the tension of weeping and rejoicing is painful and awkward, we must resist the temptation to avoid each other. We must continue to meet together, reminding each other of God’s goodness, and praying for one another.

There’s a reason we are called a body. We need one another.

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.

The truth is: we may sometimes feel helpless in motherhood, but because of Christ, we will never be hopeless.

'Theology' can be an intimidating word. For many of us, it calls to mind professors, pastors, or academics tirelessly pouring over ancient books. But it actually means 'the study of God.' So, momma, you're a theologian, and believe it or not, you're raising tiny theologians in your home. 

Every day the world around us affects our kids' theology – the shows they watch, the books they read, and the neighbors they play with are all teaching them something about God, his relationship to his people, and his world. 

So, the question isn't, 'Are our children theologians?' But instead, 'Have we taken the time to teach them to be good ones?'

Thankfully, God has equipped every one of us to be a student of his word! Each of us – you and me and even our tiny theologians – are able to come to the word of God, to study it with joy and understanding, and to share those rich truths with one other.

Momma, we have the honor and joy of joining with God in the process of raising tiny theologians. Let's teach!

While motherhood often brings women together, it can also highlight differences that challenge our love for one another. More than ever before, in this world of Motherhood-by-Instagram, opportunities abound for comparison, criticism, and misunderstandings.

Quite often I’m tempted to judge or criticize a mom who parents differently than I do, feeds her kids healthier than I do, prioritizes her family better than I do, keeps house better than I do, or exercises more than I do. If I find some fault in her, I am less apt to feel inferior in comparison to her...

But the message of the Gospel intersects all my sinful heart attitudes: "Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you".

Because of what Christ did for me, loving me to the cross while I was still his enemy, my identity in him is a foundation for loving unity toward other women, even and especially toward the mom who is different from me.

As moms, we hold our tiny, new babies and wonder what they might do in their lives, what their giggles may sound like, who they may marry, and if they’ll live near to or far from us one day. We dream and we hope from our cultural understanding of a productive or contributive life.

Once we become a mom of a child with special needs, we are often reassured by others of the unexpected achievements, or performance, that may await. Our children with special needs may speak and write, act or compete in sporting activities...But is that the basis of their value and their worth? And what happens when they don't, or indeed can't?
...
To be a human being is to carry what C. S. Lewis called 'the weight of glory,' the imprint of the 'I AM who I AM' God. We will never meet, talk to, or care for a mere mortal...We have value not because of what we do, but because of who we are, and whose we are.

So we look towards the one who made our children in his beautiful image. We find the hope and standard of worth in the words of the Almighty.

Do you build walls of division within your church?

I know what you are thinking—"No! I warmly greet anyone who I pass walking down the halls of my church." But… what about your small group? How unified are you when someone shares an opinion on a matter of preference with which you disagree? What do you do when someone is different than you?

As we draw near to our sister, are we supposed to forget our differences? No! We are to use them to build up our sisters in Christ. God gives us unique schools of circumstances that are meant to cultivate new knowledge of Him—whether it is singleness, infertility, aging parents, financial difficulty, or illness.

However, rather than building a wall because of difference with your sister, build a bridge because of grace. After listening to your sister’s struggle, consider how Christ has ministered to both of you in similar ways. From that place of humility and common ground, be a caring sister and tenderly apply truths of the gospel that you have learned in your school of circumstance to your hurting sister’s heart.

Our differences do not have to divide. We can build bridges of grace rather than walls of division... . And, we would get front row seats in witnessing the power of the gospel transform the lives of those we love… even in the midst of our differences.

I’m sleep deprived. You probably are, too.

I’m sleep deprived because we have a four-year-old son who struggles with sleep due to disability. You might be sleep deprived because of an infant or a toddler or a teenager or hormone problems or anxiety or never-ending piles of work or too many Netflix binges.

...I’ve heard all the admonitions about how we’re not God and how sleeping is recognizing our dependence on him. I couldn’t agree more. I agree with my whole heart, even as I beg God to allow me the privilege of those precious hours of dependence each night. But sometimes he says no to the sleep we long for and he asks us to depend on him in a different way. 

...Ask God to make his fruit overflow at all times and in all circumstances, so that we can say with Paul that we know how to be brought low and how to abound, in little sleep and much, and it’s not by negating all the effects of sleeplessness. It’s by being content in him and slogging through the fog with kindness.

When my son was just about a year old, I heard a mom friend say that she was doing scripture memory with her three-year-old because he was, “Such a sponge.” I had other friends reading a story from The Jesus Storybook Bible every night as part of their routine. And still others who were taking their school-aged children to Wednesday night church to learn the Bible with a group.

I remember feeling intimidated and wondering if I was behind. “Should I be doing more scripture memory with my baby?” (I literally thought that, even though he couldn’t talk yet!). Instead of focusing on the long road, making it a goal to consistently expose him to the word of God, I felt apprehensive about each method and strategy.

How do you know what to teach your children about the Bible?

Well, the goal is to equip them to be a disciple of Jesus Christ — to be able to follow him in obedience as adults if they place their faith in him.

Let them see you authentically loving God, repenting when you fail, turning to God in prayer, and studying sound doctrine along with the local church. Involve them when you host neighbors for dinner, encourage them to work hard when no one is looking, and love them as an image-bearer of God. It’s hard to be faithful in this work..., but what to teach them is actually fairly simple. 

Teach them to be a follower of Christ.
 

It started less than an hour after she was born. Still exhausted and overjoyed after delivery, when the long-awaited newborn daughter I cradled began rooting for her first meal, I fed her. Three years (and a baby brother) later, feeding these children remains my primary task in life.

When so much of my brain space is occupied with thoughts of my children’s meals, it’s no surprise that it comes up in conversation with fellow moms. A new friend at a playground exclaimed that watching my toddler son devour a hardboiled egg made her feel guilty about her kids’ chips...
I guess even I feel some guilt about feeding my family sometimes.

...if you can’t shake your longing for guilt-free eating, the gospel reminds us we are in good company. We’re all groaning for the redemption of our bodies at that marvelous feast, but we miss the mark when we assume food choices can provide us a bit of moral superiority on the way. It’s not that caring about food or farming is bad, or that God doesn’t care about it himself. It’s that dividing food into categories that signal our success as a parent, maybe thinking that a “clean” or “natural” menu is a way to uphold our virtue or that feeding our kids more vegetables than crackers can ease our guilt, can go too far...

The Christian life is not about what we’re putting in our mouths, but what has come out of God’s. Our food choices are of some value, but not eternal value; God’s word stands firm forever.
 

It took me 14 months and a second pregnancy to admit I had a traumatic birth. Nearly a year and a half later, I finally realized what had been hovering over my shoulder like a black cloud, a haze enveloping me ever since the birth of my first...

I think our deepest fears are faced when we experience trauma. In the moments between my body beginning contractions and finally meeting my son, I came the closest to my mortality as a person I had ever been. Traumatic births bring the fragility of our existence front and center...

But there is hope. Coming to us through the very same process we are struggling through, the very process God cursed: Mary carried Christ for nine months, laboring, groaning, and finally delivering our redeemer in a barn.

God used the curse, to break the curse.

The birth of our babies—especially our first—is supposed to be magical. We expect a quick rebound from what’s often the most physically challenging experience in our lives. Messages fired at us on television, through the internet, and on social media aim to convince us: once we embrace our child for the first time, we’ll float our way through bliss.

What if our stories are different?

My first encounter with childbirth, for example, left me feeling as if I’d been tossed into a furnace.
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I suffered, but I didn’t despair. Why not? I credit the hand of God. From the abundance of baby meals sent by friends and family, to the compassionate care of my OB, to the willingness of many to listen as I retold the story of my traumatic birth—I was cared for. The Lord met me in my furnace.

Through the fire, I had my clearest-yet view of Christ. I saw and felt his dedication to me. I learned to trust him not just day-by-day, but moment-to-moment. Postpartum depression slowed me down. I learned to savor the good moments.