Biblical Motherhood: The Problem
I learned a very important lesson about biblical motherhood, this year. This lesson completely changed the way I looked at biblical motherhood. Around that time, my third child was about a year old. We had just returned from living in Ethiopia for a few months. I was totally exhausted and felt like I hadn’t slept since the day he was born. I told my husband that I was DONE having kids, and he was too. We were ready to move on to the next chapter of life.
The problem was, none of the forms of birth control felt right for me. I did not want to “alter” my body with pills and surgery, and neither did my husband. Additionally, using condoms every time my husband and I were sexually intimate felt unnecessary and unnatural in a sense. So, I brought the issue to my pastor’s wife. Essentially, her answer was that no matter what we do, God is ultimately in control. She had planted the seed.
The Seed Gets Watered
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.” – 1 Corinthians 3:6
After speaking with my pastor’s wife, I still lacked clarity. I knew in my heart that I did not want to have another baby. I just needed to get God to agree with me. Are you starting to see the issue? So, one day while I was at women’s bible study, my little 1 year old decided he did not want to be in the children’s area. He was giving the care worker a hard time, and I had to go back there to calm him down. I ended up missing the whole bible study, but God had other plans.
As I sat in the back, I started chatting with the woman who was watching the kids. Somehow, we got on the topic of ending the season of child bearing. She told me the story of how she only wanted one child but ended up with six! I was getting nervous. She said she fought it every step of the way, and here fighting affected her marriage. Finally, she realized that fighting wasn’t the answer, and it definitely wasn’t worth an unhappy marriage. She surrendered to God’s will. As a result, she hasn’t had a pregnancy in 10 years!
Biblical Motherhood: The Solution
That’s when everything clicked for me! I was so focused on what I wanted, that I had not even considered what God wanted. I had learned to submit to my husband as a wife, but I had not fully surrendered to God in the area of biblical motherhood. Sometimes, as women, our conversation with God goes something like this. “Lord, you can have control in my marriage, over the way I dress, but not over my uterus.” It sounds a little silly, but it’s true! I thought child-bearing was all about me. It was about how many children I wanted, whether I wanted boys or girls, and even when they would be born. While I still do not desire to have any more children, I have taken on the surrendered heart and attitude of Jesus’ mother, Mary.
“Then Mary said, ‘Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.’ And the angel departed from her.” – Luke 1:38
I talked about this surrender in more detail on this video on YouTube. What I had learned was that success in biblical motherhood had nothing to do with how well your homeschooled children read. It has nothing to do with whether your kids eat all their fruits and vegetables. True successful biblical motherhood is absolute surrender to God. Not my will Lord, but thy will be done.
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Blessings sis!
