The Calling of Motherhood for the Worrisome Mother

Entrusting our children to God when we think we could do it better.

In the days of pregnancy and early weeks of motherhood, my heart struggled to reconcile two ideas—my love for my child and the call to entrust him to God. I would look at my fragile infant wiggling on a quilt on the floor and wonder how Almighty God who orchestrates the blinking of every star and spinning of each planet could possibly take note of us. If only I had control over his tiny life—then I would never need to worry again.

What would I control? My boy’s health and safety. His future career and family. His faith and behavior. The friends he chooses. The knowledge he stows away. Who he sets his love on. What he sees and absorbs at school. While I can have a great impact on each of these, I can never have complete control. I can’t guarantee a healthy, happy life of good behavior and conversion to Christianity; I don’t have that kind of power or sovereignty. I attempt to control them, but all I ever achieve is exhaustion and headaches from my vain grappling. Meanwhile, this vain endeavor takes my eyes off my true calling: Not sovereignty, but rest and stewardship.

I need to lay the outworkings of my child’s life at the pierced feet of Jesus. They are not mine to hold. When I fight for sovereignty, I pridefully believe myself a better god than God himself, and I scoff at God’s love for my son and I displayed at the cross. This is why Peter paired humility and fear in his letter to the scattered believers: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you” (1 Pet. 5:6–7 CSB). I can’t order my sons’ lives anymore than I can keep the moon in orbit around the earth, but I can trust the God of all grace and goodness to do it all.

As mothers, we need to remember that though our children came from our wombs, it was God who created them. He knew about our babies before we decided we wanted them. He knit them together inside us (Ps. 139:13). As he did, he wrote each of their stories (Ps. 139:16). Just as he knew David, Jeremiah, and Paul before they were born and knew how their life would unravel, so he does our children’s as well (Jer. 1:5; Gal. 1:15). And he is trustworthy—his ways are higher and his ways are best (Is. 55:9; Rom. 8:28).

We’ve entrusted our salvation to God. When God softened our hearts to the gospel, we believed and repented of our sins, and committed our entire lives to him—both earthly and heavenly. If he can be trusted with our eternal destination, the state of our souls, our lives and heartbeats, how much more can he be trusted with our children?

Sometimes it will be hard. We will cry out to him in lament. When I learned that one of my boys’ had an anaphylactic allergy to eggs and I saw him struggle to breathe after consuming the wrong cookies, I told God this wasn’t right. How dare he allow such pain in my child’s life? How could he allow such brokenness in this world? As moms, we will long for different circumstances because our hearts know this is not what we were created for. 

Yet in the midst of these laments, we can also trust the same God we cry out to. We can trust the Great Physician to care for our child’s health—the God who heals the sick and allows ailments is righteous. God, the source of all joy, knows the trials needed to refine and teach our children (1 Pet. 1:6–7). Our God, the Spirit who changes hearts to believe the gospel, will not lose any who are his (John 6:39). We can trust him. He’s a better caretaker of our children than we could ever be.

What is our role then? As mothers, we’re called to disciple and raise our children according to the Word of God.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6:4–9 ESV)

As parents, we need to be diligent to teach our children the gospel. They will not absorb it simply by watching us and being dragged to church each Sunday—or watching us wring our hands as we fret about their future. Rather, our faith should be such an integrated part of our lives that it’s repeatedly taught throughout our days with our children as if it were painted on our doors and window sills. 

But notice that God first calls parents to have these words on their hearts. The gospel must first penetrate and change our lives and fuel our faith before we can teach it to our children. Again, this doesn’t come from literally filling our home with Scripture but having it fill us so that it pours out of us when we sit down and get up. If the gospel isn’t changing us, we can’t expect to be able to rightly teach it to them. Our role is to know the Word for ourselves, to have it as an integral part of our own lives, so much so it bleeds into our lives with our children.

For each mother, this will look different based on each child’s personality, style of learning, age, and season of life. That’s okay. Rather than comparing to one another, let’s encourage one another to grow in the knowledge of the gospel and diligently teach it to our children. We can learn from one another without feeling the shame that seeps out of comparison.

As we raise our children in the way and fear of the Lord, let us be persistently on our knees in prayer for these sweet children we love, entrusting them to the Lord—not letting our worries and fears distract us from our duty to train them according to his truth.

Another version of this appeared first on Risen Motherhood.