I am a singer, songwriter, wife, mother, Jesus follower. I send out a 2-minute read every Tuesday about Jesus and life in God.
Motherhood Goals
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Hi Friends, Happy Mother’s Day week! I once saw a video where a woman shared “one simple tip to keeping your home spotless”. In the next scene, she ushers her children and husband out the front door, and closes it behind them. Brilliant! We chuckle at memes like this because of the seed of truth underneath them. There is so much pressure on mothers, self-imposed and otherwise, to do it all—keep a perfect home, advance her career, remember all the milestones, volunteer at all the things. We read the million parenting books, pulling from each one, hoping not to mess up our kids all the while knowing we will miss the mark. It has me wondering: what does God want in a mother? As the only person in the world who chose His own family, who did He choose? You might think He would choose to be child 2 or 3 in the family. Let them work out their parenting style on someone else first. Maybe He’d choose a well respected family line: one with generational wealth and respectability. But He chose Mary—a young girl with no experience in having a family. Too young to have much experience in anything, really. But there is one thing she had: Mary had a heart fully surrendered to God. God chose the woman who said, “Be it unto me according to Your word” to raise the Man who would say, “Not My will but Yours be done”. It is not wealth or opportunity or comforts that are ideal conditions in which to raise a child. Perhaps the most important environment is one of surrender. Maybe preparing our children for their future has less to do with getting them in front of all the right STEM curriculums or in the perfect sports leagues. Maybe it’s not agonizing over exposing them to the right Bible teachings at the right time. Maybe our greatest gift to our children is raising them in a home where we face the future with our eyes on Jesus and our hands wide open. I’m aware, even as I re-read these words, that I’m not one who can speak out of authority on this. There are miles between where I am and where I hope to be. Lord, help me to live in open-hearted surrender. Help me to trust You in all things. Let all my life say, “Be it unto me according to Your word”. –Anna |
Anna Blanc
I am a singer, songwriter, wife, mother, Jesus follower. I send out a 2-minute read every Tuesday about Jesus and life in God.
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Hi Friends, Last week we talked about finding every last bit of our ordinary lives in the grand storyline of God. This week, let’s look at how we help one another do just that. When Eugene Peterson counseled pastors on how to help their parishioners find themselves in God’s story, he said, “Listening is the first step. It is the precondition for… making the transition from what a person perceives as alienation and experiences as a jumble of unrelated irrelevancies to a sense of coherence and...