“‘Am I going to continue to trust God, even if he never fulfills the longings of my heart?’

That question filled my mind after the doctor informed me that I was born with a somewhat rare medical condition that prevented me from bearing my own babies. The news almost devastated me. For the first time in my life, I faced a situation I couldn’t quickly fix or work my way out of. It didn’t seem fair. With a tear-stained face, I entered into the greatest wrestling match of my life with the Lord.

‘Where was God in my childlessness?’

‘How does the Bible speak to my suffering?’

‘Why would God withhold apparent good from me?’

Maybe you’ve asked similar questions. Maybe you’ve struggled month after month to get pregnant, to no avail. Maybe you’ve lost a precious little one by miscarriage. Maybe you’ve had one child, but are experiencing second hand infertility and another baby won’t come.

God met me in the midst of my longing for motherhood.

As I searched scripture for hope in the midst of my suffering, I learned that the pages of the Bible weren’t silent on the topic of childlessness. Seven barren women are highlighted in the Bible.

I’m glad the Lord included the struggles of other women like myself—women longing to be mothers. 

Because the good news the gospel offers in the midst of our pain is that our identity isn’t in our ability to bear babies. The greatest role of a woman is not to be a mother, but rather to glorify God with our whole lives in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. 

Biblical womanhood is about boldness, tenacity, tender heartedness, and loving the Lord and his people.

Even if we never have that longed for baby; even if our family looks different than we’d imagine, we can rest in the fact that the Lord promises his presence. In him, we can find hope. 

Press into him and allow him to speak life into your soul.”

Have you ever considered how your identity was shaped?

Our identities are who we are at our core. The things that often define us can be connected to our family’s achievements, or possibly our own abilities, the things we’ve accomplished or even failed at.

If you’re anything like me, you take pride in your roles.

I grew up in the church as a preacher’s kid, I was a cheerleader for most of my life, a sorority girl in college, & after graduation, I soon became a wife. After marriage, we unexpectedly struggled with infertility, experienced failed adoptions, then—by the grace of God—became pregnant with twins, & I finally became a mama. Oh, the pride!

Unfortunately, when my marriage shattered, so did my self-esteem.

I became a single mama in 2015 & I was lost, broken, hurting & fearful of how life was going to turn out. I desperately needed the Lord & needed him to redefine who I was, my life, & mend my heart.

Christ constantly challenged the root of people’s identities, but also graciously & freely gave newness to those who believed in him. These pictures of unconditional acceptance, grace, & love caused me to see myself the way he does; in spite of my circumstances or what other people may think of me.

2 Cor. 5:17 tells us, ‘If we are in Christ, we are new creatures and made new.’ Paul is talking about our identities—who we are. Those old labels & attachments rooted in anything besides the work of the Lord will pass away.

As single mamas, it is easy to wear that label & deal with the empowering or negative connotations of it. Although we are doing a two person job alone most days of the week, we have to remember where our true identity lies. Raising our babies alone is what we do, it is not who we are.

Christ was never concerned with job titles & status; he surrounded himself with tax collectors, the sick, prostitutes, & known sinners. He knew who they were & he used their lives for his glory. He came to have a life altering interaction with us that would change what & how we do all things forever.

Out of those truths of who we are, what we do is done differently.

Nine weeks. Sixty-three days. Seven hundred fifty-six hours.

Those numbers measure the span of time I lived in the hospital in 2015.

The plan was simple: I was to continue carrying our second daughter, Alisa Jane, until it was no longer safe to keep her in my womb.

Recently, I told a friend about this experience, and she asked, ‘How did your family logistically make that happen?’

Thankfully, our little family didn’t just survive that season; we actually thrived, even in all the heartache and grief. Reflecting on the experience with the benefit of hindsight, I answered my new friend with the simple, yet profound, reason for this: ‘The body of Christ surrounded us.’

Speaking to the disciples on the eve of his death, Jesus said, ‘By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

We know God’s love means we are to offer this same type of love to those not yet covered by the blood of Christ. Yet sometimes, I wonder if we have neglected to remember the true intent of Christ’s words on the eve of his death. Jesus was concerned that night with how they would love one another.

Jesus anticipated that his followers would be known by their love for one another, because the uniqueness of their love would reflect the greatest love this world has ever known: God’s incomprehensible, unconditional love.

This is the distinguishing characteristic of the Church.

Those nine weeks I lived at Baylor Hospital were some of the most humbling days of my life. I watched as believers from our community surrounded us in support. Friends with children of their own gave of their time. Christians we hardly knew provided meals, grocery shopped, and gave financially to help us navigate that trying season. Believers—some I had never even met—visited me almost daily, bringing with them the fragrance of Christ to the 6th floor at Baylor.

When we operate as he intended for us to live, we, the body of Christ, are a magnificent reflection of the greatest love known to man—God’s love for us.

Peaceful sleep sounds echoed from my husband and two youngest children. Even the dogs were sleeping. My Bible was open, along with my copy of Tabletalk magazine and my notebook. My coffee cup was in arm’s reach, sitting on a calico mug mat that my ten-year-old daughter made in sewing class.

That morning, my prayer time stopped at the concentric circle labeled ‘neighbor.’ I was praying for my immediate neighbor, whose house I could see from my writing desk.

I love waking up and seeing the familiar van parked in the same spot, and as the sky yawns open, the house and people in it unveil their morning rituals (lights on, dogs out, paper retrieved, a wave of greeting, maybe a child running across the street to return a Tupperware or deliver a loose bouquet of red peonies).

Loving your neighbors brings comfort and peace.

So there I was, praying for my neighbor. A typical morning. Except that the phone I had turned off, which was in the other room, continued to receive text messages alerting me that something was terribly, dreadfully wrong in the house across the street. The house of the man for whom I was praying.

And then I noticed it: burly men ducking around the back of my house, wearing orange shirts marked DEA—Drug Enforcement Agency.

What does the conservative Bible believing family who lives across the street do in a crisis of this magnitude? How ought we to think about this? How ought we to live?

We could barrack ourselves in the house, remind ourselves and our children that ‘evil company perverts’ (see 1 Cor. 15:33), and, like the good Pharisees that we are always poised to become, thank God that we are not like evil meth addicts.

We could surround our home in our own version of yellow crime-scene tape, giving the message that we are better than this, that we make good choices, that we would never fall into this mess.

But that, of course, is not what Jesus calls us to do.

When reading about Paul in the New Testament what comes to mind? A gifted missionary perhaps? Paul wrote letters to various churches, traveled from city to city, to the Jew and to the Gentile, preaching the good news of Jesus Christ!

As encouraging as this is, I can’t help but wonder what I have in common with Paul.

From the Chick-fil-A drive through to daycare pickups, from dirty diapers to spilled Cheerios, from grocery store trips to dance recitals, the life of a mama with kids seems very different from his.

Yet just like Paul, we have been given the same mission.

Simply put, evangelism is sharing the gospel or the good news of Jesus Christ. It can seem intimidating not knowing where to start or having the right words to say, but when Jesus gave us the great commission, he ended it with a powerful reminder as we seek to obey this command.

He reminds us that he will be with us always.

The first thing we can do is to pray that God would press onto our hearts people who he wants us to witness to.

Think about those who are around you that may not know who Jesus is. Prayer shows our dependency on God to give us opportunities to share the truth about him with those people whose hearts he has already been working in. We, the messengers, just need to be ready to share.

The second thing we can do is practice.

As often as I could, I started sharing the gospel with my one-year-old son who would, at worst, ignore me and, at best, clap at my feeble attempts. Reciting the full gospel out loud to my child gave me the opportunity to practice what I would say in a way that sounded natural.

We can allow an embarrassing moment to keep us from experiencing a powerful promise that follows after our obedience, or we can continue to press forward—placing one foot of faith in front of the other.

We’re not alone in this. As we begin to share our faith with others and teach them to know and follow Christ, we will actively see God working in our lives and in the lives of others.”

The next time you’re tempted to open your mouth in complaint, pray for the Lord to put a guard over your mouth and ask him to fill your heart and mouth with gratitude, to bring glory to the Lord over all.

Every mother wants a strong relationship with their daughter. Or at least, I think they do. I actually don’t know for certain since I’m not a mother. I’m a daughter who just graduated from her teens last year.

As I look back on my teen years, I loved hanging out with mom. I loved learning from her. I even took her correction pretty well because she exposed my sin truthfully yet tenderly. I loved praying with her, baking with her, going on adventures with her, and reading books with her. What’s more: I still do.

So what’s so special about my mom?

It actually isn’t anything particularly special at all. It’s merely two things: she prioritized her relationship with her kids and she relied on the grace of God.

As I consider my teen years, I’m mindful of five things my mom did to build this relationship with me: she started young, she prayed for and with me, she risked vulnerability, she learned with me, and she had fun with me.

I wish you could meet my mom. She’d say she’s far from a spiritual giant and that raising godly kids wasn’t about her.

‘It just took intentionality,’ she’d tell you. ‘But most of all, the grace of God.’

For both my mom and you, there is gospel grace to meet you at every turn. No mom is ‘mom enough.’

Every mom needs infinite grace to forgive her sins, to work through her mistakes, and to point her and her kids to Jesus.

Remember: he is the savior of your family, not you.

Do you remember the first time your parents or friends talked to you about sex?

I wouldn’t describe the emotions that I experienced from the conversation with my mom or with my friends as positive. And yet, in Genesis 2:25 we have a description of a very positive experience. Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed.

Can you imagine a scenario where you could be completely naked, emotionally and physically, and be unashamed? Nothing to hide. Nothing to cover. No good parts to emphasize. No bad parts to deemphasize.

This is the beauty of the sexual experience as God intends it.

We know that our kids won’t get the biblical view of sex from culture. The culture swings between sex being too important and not important at all. It is the end all of every great experience and it is so unimportant you can engage in it with anyone.

We need to give our kids a different view. We need to give our kids a grace-centered, biblical view of sex.

The question is how do we talk about sex to our children in a way that validates the goodness of sex, the way God intended, without shaming or scaring them into thinking sex is a bad thing.

How do we stand next to our child and give them more than a list of dos and don’ts?

We must show our children that a relationship with Jesus is better than any other experience. And we must make sure they know that no sin, sexual or otherwise, is beyond the grace of God. We can only give a complete biblical view of sex when we affirm that Christ loves the prostitute as much as he loves the woman who was a virgin when she got married.

Grace levels all of us.

This glorious news is worth the embarrassment that you may feel in any conversation with your kids.

So smile, and share.

The RM Team loves seeing questions roll in whenever we’re prepping for an “Ask Us Anything” podcast episode with Laura and Emily. Unfortunately, we can’t answer every question submitted to us—there’s not enough time and we don’t know or haven’t experienced everything! However, we have a treasure trove of resources and information in our show archives, blog archives, and old show notes. We’ve rallied up a collection links to help answer some of the most asked questions we receive below...

No parent wants to wade through difficult issues with their kids. But sometimes the unavoidable things are God’s grace to us and our child. Sometimes they are the very things he uses to draw us more to himself.

“One of the first lessons a pilot learns is to trust his instruments over his feelings. A pilot’s feelings may mislead, but his plane’s instruments provide him the true information to keep him safe and focused.

Life sometimes feels like a flying in a storm, doesn’t it? We bump up against difficult circumstances, find our faith shaken by loss, lack, or trials; & struggle to reconcile the feelings we experience with the wisdom we know from scripture.

We reach out to social media & blogs like air masks to maintain some semblance of control when what we need is the lifegiving air of our hope in Christ.

But what does that mean? To ‘find our hope in Christ?’

When people talk about hope, it’s usually in uncertain terms. We hope that thing happens. We hope that situation changes. We hope, but we wait to know the outcome.

And since we can’t be sure of what will happen next, our hearts are tempted to look at our circumstances & assess God’s faithfulness to us by the state of our current realities.

‘Is there enough money in the budget?’ ‘Are my kids healthy?’ ‘Does my marriage feel strained?’ ‘Does God love me?’

But the result of circumstantial hope is despair. If we can’t be sure of an outcome, we feel an urge to self-promote & self-preserve in order to care for ourselves in the face of uncertainty.

The truth is, life is full of suffering, painful consequences of sin, & a general brokenness that affects every relationship, conversation, & trip to the grocery store with five kids under five.

But as Christians, we know hope in an unchanging & eternal Christ is a certain thing.

When we look at the cross, we see that God gave up his most precious Son to save his enemies who delighted in their rebellion. In Christ, we have a fixed point of God’s faithfulness to us.

If God has given us all that we need through Christ, will he let us falter when we grow weary in training defiant children or haven’t slept in seven months? When the weight of our feelings are crushing & we can’t see if we’re flying right-side up or upside down?

No, mama, he will not. Because Who we hope in was & is victorious.”

These littles of mine certainly stand out.

I was born to a white mother and a black father. And I should mention, I’m one of 7 kids. I had the muscle tone of a seasoned female wrestler and the hair of a trolls doll left in the water too long. As you can imagine, I didn’t quite fit in.

My husband, Oshiomogho, is the youngest son of Nigerian parents who left everything in Africa to bring a few dollars, his older sister, and their rich Nigerian history to Canada.

Soon after we found out we were pregnant, I realized in the Atogwe family, tradition says the grandparents name the babies. The Sloanes, Haydens, Micahs, Chloes, and Whitleys of my dreams were laid to rest.

My son is Oshiolema, and my daughter is Keogena Na’Airah.

They’re both different like their mama was different. Different like their daddy was different.

But I’m elated to assure them that their Savior was different too. Jesus knew what it was felt like to be unlike his peers, and unlike any human that ever lived. He certainly didn’t fit in. And yet, even though he’s different, Jesus securely knows his identity.

Christ proudly stood firm in hs identity, and in a beautiful exchange, Jesus humbled himself, choosing to say whose he is. Fully God, fully man, and the way he lived his life here on earth speaks powerfully about who he is.

Whether or not we fit in—if we are accepted or rejected—the deep desire to be understood is fulfilled when we remember Who is in us and what he has called us to do. As followers of Christ, we are called to be the lights of this world, and I’ve never once known a light to blend into the darkness.

No two of us are alike. We will all face moments where we don’t feel like we fit in-but in Christ we can walk in secure and beautiful identity until we meet him face to face.”