Mother's Day always brings with it bittersweet memories of the two little loves that allow me to celebrate this occasion. As kids do, they are getting big. I did not get one Mother's Day gift that had a hand print on it. It was a tinge sad.
Like Mother's Day, the nearing end of school also makes me wax nostalgic. How could they be so old? Am I doing all the things to make them healthy, successful and most of all happy?
I have been reading and thinking a lot about Grace lately. In the context of mothering, I need a lot of it; yet, until lately I'm not sure I had a real understanding of it (or as much of an understanding as one can have of something like Grace).
Anyone who really knows me knows that I am a doer, a pleaser, an achiever, and a ball of anxious worry hidden behind a lot of sarcasm. I have spent the better part of 39-years trying to earn...earn success, attention, friends, love, etc., etc. Unknowingly, I've even tried to earn my salvation through good works and church attendance. Looking back, I can't decide whether God is SMH or LOL at those efforts.
Somewhere along the way recently, I was hit by a ton of what probably should have been very obvious bricks - Jesus earned my salvation and there is nothing I can do to earn it (it's already been earned) or to destroy it. It's there. It's there because He first loved me and for no other reason. There is not a single thing I can do to make myself more (or less) worthy and that is a wonderful, life-altering gift.
This is not to say that I should spend every day like I spent Mother's Day, in slothful gluttony. There is work to do on this Earth - but the joy and excitement of doing it out of a place of happiness and peace, and not because it is an obligation on me to do in order to earn my place, makes it feel like a true work of love.
I have had to think differently, too, about this Grace in the context of motherhood. My beautiful girls have been given the same gift of God's Grace. They are worthy without question. I know this, of course. There is nothing they could do to earn or destroy my own love for them, much less God's. But the deeper issue I have had to grapple with is the fact that my worth or value as a mother is not tied to their achievement. In other words, not only are their achievements irrelevant to their value, but I need to stop obsessing about them as a reflection on my worth as a mother - they are irrelevant to that too.
To be honest, when my kids talk about "when they grow up" they talk about being a teacher and a police officer, respectively. These are both noble professions without which none of us would be here. My parents were exactly those two things when I was a child. I have nothing but respect for both professions and find them both to be terribly underpaid and underappreciated. But there is still a part of me that I am embarrassed to admit wishes they would say "engineer and cancer doctor" or "president of the United States and astronaut."
This is on me - it is my failure to realize my self-worth is not tied to their achievement or my own. It is my failure to accept the Grace that is so freely given and renews without end. It is my own stupid ideas of what defines success, value, and worth.
The truth is teaching and patrolling (or whatever) is what they will DO when they grow up, not what they will BE. What they will be, is what they already are, a beautiful, forgiven, saved, Child of Christ. What they will be and what they are is "sealed as Christ's own forever." What I really want them to be - now and always - is loved and happy. And as long as they teach and patrol with the love of Christ in their hearts, I will be the proudest mama on Earth.
Comments
Post a Comment