I am a five-letter word.
M.O.M.M.Y.
I’m not sure what you thought I meant.
I as mommy look different than you as mommy,
It’s not good or bad.
It’s different.
No mother is perfect.
Walk a mile in my shoes,
I’ll drive a mile in your minivan,
and we can meet somewhere in the middle
and quickly learn
that we all birth replicas of our hearts.
They lay in our arms,
Crawl on our floors,
Run through our homes.
Yes, we birth tiny versions of love,
and that is common ground.
Over our swelling hearts we prayed.
In labor we cried out to God.
Through scrapped knees, snotty retorts and missed curfews,
we implore Jesus to help.
So when we walk the aisles of our stores,
and trek through the halls of our schools,
and sit under the roof of this Church,
let us not compare our labels to other women,
since the only thing we know
for certain
is that we serve Jesus and are called according to His purposes.
There is another word.
Not a good one like “mommy.”
It’s four letters.
It stings like the wasp that got me the day I grabbed the hose too fast.
It stings me, right here, every single time.
It’s how I introduce myself,
describe myself.
It’s the reflection I see in a sink full of dirty dish water,
how I define myself when I look into the eyes of my sons and my daughters.
It’s four letters.
J.U.S.T.
I am just a wife.
I just take care of the house.
I don’t work, I just serve at the church.
I am just a mother.
That lie digs deep.
It steals our joy,
and preys on our insecurities.
We are more than just.
So much more.
We are His workmanship.
His chosen ones.
His children.
Tiny replicas of His love.
The sheep of His pasture.
We all gather and kneel at His altars.
We are His.
He owns me and I am totally okay with that.
Also, we are broken.
Hairlines and fault lines and heartache.
Tokens of past mistakes that cause us
to pluck the strings of our hearts
like guitars
and sound a mournful tune of errors made.
So I ask:
How has evilness wrapped its hand around your throat?
What’s your label?
What do you see
as your identity
that makes it so hard to breathe?
A drunk? a user? a cheater? a liar?
A bad wife? Just an okay mother?
Too heavy? Too ugly? Too dumb?
Just so you know,
those are lies.
Every single one.
Forget just.
It’s in the past.
Our past mistakes aren’t even a part of the story reel
that plays today.
If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away.
We should count ourselves blessed to have friends
who will remind us of that everyday.
So you can stop calling to mind the former things,
or ponder things of the past.
We’re called to let it go,
lay it down.
Not lay it down while you’re wrapped up in it like a blanket.
It’s more like, burn it and run.
Christ is our defender
and tomorrow’s freedom
will only come from today’s surrender.
We are broken,
but our God, our Potter, He makes us whole.
Sometimes He takes us to a place of brokenness
to perfect His work in us.
At His wheel He shapes and creates.
In wombs He knits.
Were created in His likeness.
Oh yes, there are times we feel battered and are left bleeding,
but we are worth more than
the lies.
The lies that say we’re just….insert something here.
But now, O Lord, You are our Father. We are the clay and You are our Potter
and all of us are the work of Your hand.
He designed us to live wholly, without cracks that slice through and leave
pain in their wake.
In the trials that hurt, we have to see God in the mending.
But the wheels come off and
We forget
That our identity is in Christ.
We drown in the comparisons,
putting the focus on our differences
instead of seeing them for what they are.
They are God’s fingerprints.
We are all loved and pursued by Him
Equally.
A new four-letter word.
Free.
It’s on the parchment.
It was for freedom that Christ set us free
so stand firm
against the enemy’s schemes.
Do not let evilness
tell you that you are not good enough.
Do not let the world set your standard
for attractiveness.
Do. Not. Conform.
Be rebellious against the enemy.
It’s his fist that
beats us down,
but our names are inscribed on the hands
of the One who wears the crown.
And I get it.
Life can be boring.
Laundry and homework and meals and toilets.
Just hear this,
the days are long but the years are short.
Until our tiny heart replicas march off on their own adventures,
they are our adventures.
They are our tears of joy and the reason we cry,
“I love you!”
and
“Knock it off!”
in the same day.
We should see them through the eyes of that friend
who always says,
“Seriously, you have good kids.”
They’re a gift.
We are their mothers.
We should all seek to see that truth reflected
in the eyes of our sons and our daughters.
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