Let me tell you: motherhood has everything to do with Jesus.

In fact, without Jesus, I would argue that this whole motherhood thing is a scam.

I mean, seriously, under what other circumstances would a sane person stay up all night, or get interrupted multiple times a night, to feed, clothe, change the soiled undergarments of a tiny, often loud, miniature resemblance of a human? Amiright? 

I mean, sure, there are some earthly reasons why someone might do that. Look around, there are tons of people subjecting themselves to this mom thing without any mention of Jesus…

“They’re cute.”

Yeah, how cute is throwing mommy’s toothbrush in the toilet?

“We want one of each.”

People, we’re not collecting stamps here. If you want to collect something, stamps are much cheaper, and they don’t talk back, either.

“They bring so much joy, they’ll pay it back someday, everyone else is doing it…” 

Those answers are cute at best, but let me tell you something: they don’t carry the day when you’re up to your neck in postpartum depression. When no matter how hard you try to bond with your baby, get them to latch, read all the mommy blogs or keep a routine, you are just sad.

Or when you get the call, and you find out that your child has a life-altering disease. Or disability. Or terminal illness. That they won’t grow up to be the postcard perfect child you had envisioned for your family of four. 

…Or maybe you don’t have four. It took you a long time to get pregnant or getting pregnant wasn’t a possibility at all, and God closed the door on your dreams of that perfect family. 

Or you have more than four. Turns out twins and triplets don’t read as multiple plus signs on the pregnancy test. 

Guys, there has to be more to this motherhood thing. It has to be more than “we just want to grow our family” or the survival of our species. Because at the end of the day–when that day was the longest and hardest of your life–there has to be more to this motherhood thing. 

To tell you what motherhood has to do with Jesus, I first have to tell you more about Jesus. And his story starts way before Christmas. The story starts with God–the creator and sustainer of all things. The beginning and the end. 

• So in the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. And everything in it. And that included humans, which were set apart from the rest of his creation–they were made in His image. They were special. 
• But then, as many of you are familiar, we messed up big and disobeyed God. We didn’t trust him, we didn’t think his ways were truly better than our own, and we went our own way. Sin had entered that perfect world.
• It gets messier from there, lots more to the story, but basically our sin separates us from God in a way that we can’t fix on our own. No matter how much “good” we do, we will always fall into sin because we are tainted, imperfect beings that have no place in the presence of a holy and righteous God. 
• Until Jesus Christ came on the scene. By becoming one of us. The creator–Son of God–becoming the creation. And taking the fall. For us. 
• He gave up everything. His supernatural-ness. His divine power and rank. (I mean, he came in lowly. As a boy. A BABY boy. We all know how fragile babies are!) He had to walk this earth as a man. Tempted, but never gave in. Spit on, but never retaliated. He lived the perfect, sinless life we could not. Cannot. Don’t even have a chance at. He gave it all up–willingly–for you. 
• But thank God that’s not the end of the story: Jesus Christ, after taking on all the sins of the world–including yours, and mine–rose. from. the. dead. He was resurrected, having defeated death, and now sits at the right hand of the throne of Heaven. Perfect and holy and blameless and beautiful. 
• And it is HIS beauty, HIS perfection, HIS righteousness that we get rights to. By HIS blood, we are made right again with God.

So what does that mean for us? It means that we have to understand that we are sinners. That we can’t–ever–in our own strength, in our own religiousness, in our own good-doing have that relationship with God. We can’t even be  in His presence apart from Christ, because He has no place for sin. He’s perfect. And just. It’s what we deserve–eternal separation from Him.

But through Jesus we can have that right relationship with Him. It is once again restored by what Jesus did; we just have to make him Lord and Savior of our lives. Do you know what Lord means? I think we all get the Savior part–he indeed saves us from eternal wrath of which we deserve because of our fallen nature. But Lord? What does it mean to have someone Lord of your life? It means he has the throne, right? The crown? He’s King. Not us, not any longer. We willingly and with gratitude surrender our life to the King who is worthy of it. He chooses how we will live it. (E.g. who and if we will marry, what we will do, when we have children, etc), we ask him. There is no better life. He tells us this kind of life is most abundant–WAY better than the empty shell of a life that we could ever dream up on our own. Because all of that is temporary. And purposeless; there is nothing new under the sun. There is more to life than what pleases us the most; it’s all part of a much bigger story, one that starts and ends with Jesus on the throne and eternity with him. 

So, if this is something you’ve never done before–or have, but have really gotten distracted or weary or lost–then there’s no better time than now. Today. Laying down the life you’re so busy trying to construct for yourself and recognizing that it pales in the light of God’s goodness and grace. His story. His eternity. Our time on earth is limited. He is forever. And, it’s what we were created for, remember? To worship and be with Him forever. He is worthy, you guys. Give him your life today.

Listen, I can go on about who God is and what living for him looks like, but that takes a lot more time than a single blog post. (The Bible is basically made up of a bunch of blog posts, by the way ;). But you can always learn more from resources like Everystudent.com or a local Bible-believing church. And of course I’m always down for having coffee (or chocolate milk) to chat over all things awesome. 

But back to my main point about what Jesus has to do with motherhood. Consider this: you, as a mom, are living out the gospel every day to your kids.

Every single time you pour out your life on behalf of another–in this case: small, helpless ankle biters–you are living out the gospel to your kids and to the world. Listen, the world hates dying to self. It would much rather feed our appetites of self-pleasure, self-seeking ambitions, self-glorify–but You, Mom, have and are willingly putting those things to death–nailing them to the cross–for your kids. In the same way that we have died to our old selves and put on a new life, a new creation in Christ Jesus. 

That is why we do it. That is the point of it all. Yeah, they’re cute and bring you joy and are so worth it in a million other ways, but at the end of the day, this is the lasting value we have in motherhood. The legacy that we leave behind, the testimony that we share with the world. We die to ourselves so that our children may grow in the ways of the Lord, that they and we may experience full and abundant life in him who is Christ Jesus. Amen? Amen!

Hang in there, Mamas. And keep livin’ that nose-wiping, diaper-changing, gospel living life. :)