Not as the World: Finding Peace in Motherhood
The sun dips and light filters through the back window, washing my kitchen in a warm shade of orange. It would be peaceful, except for the teething baby screeching in his highchair. The sizzling of a half-cooked dinner on the stove. The drumming in my head from sleeplessness. Fading light reminds me that the day is closing, but my responsibilities are endless.
My husband walks in after a long day in the office. “Did you remember to take the car in for an oil change?” he asks, his tone casual, unsuspecting.
My sanity suddenly feels questionable. The baby wails. The dog barks. I stab the spatula into the pan with too much force and it breaks off. I start sobbing. Unable to speak, I sprint out of the kitchen and shut the bedroom door behind me, allowing myself thirty seconds to cry before returning to perform in the show’s grand finale.
It’s too easy for me to share this story. Other mothers instantly connect. We unite in our woeful tales of misery. It’s so hard. I’m failing at working and being a mother. I’m pathetic. I haven’t showered in days. I can’t remember the last time I drank my coffee hot.
It’s too easy to live inside this narrative of failure, to masquerade as honest and vulnerable when in reality we may be playing at a false humility. We often set aside the truth that we live daily in the hard-won victory of Christ and can have abundant life now.
Throughout the gospels, we catch glimpses of a day-in-the-life of Jesus.[1] Barely time to eat, barraged by demands and needs, literally feeding 5,000 people. He gets up before the sun to pray, tries to slip away to a quiet place, and is met by hordes of people.
His response? Jesus didn’t scream, “I can’t think around you people!” and slam the bathroom door to hide with his phone. He felt compassion for them.[2] Over and over—compassion. Within the limits of human capacity and in accordance with his Father’s will, Christ selflessly met the needs of others.
His ministry was marked by exhaustion, constant commotion, and underappreciation, yet he told his followers, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27). Christ’s peace gives us steady faith and settled contentment in him even in the middle of life’s demands.
If we lack peace in our lives and we consider Scripture to be truth, the problem doesn’t lie in the veracity of Jesus’ words but in how we respond when troubled or afraid. Our fallen natures and our fallen culture are so eager to place self above all. So, the gift of peace easily becomes obscured by our self-centered perspectives, our lack of faith, and our pessimistic attitudes. Our minds can be so fixated on what is hard about life that we fail to see the One carrying us through it.
But before we run away berating ourselves for failure to have gracious responses and chipper personalities, let’s remember our dependence on Christ and his readiness to sustain us. The truth remains that we can’t manufacture joy or peace any more than we can save ourselves from eternal condemnation. Daily we must return to his wellspring of grace.
The people Jesus met on his journey through Galilee were no more needy, weary, or broken than we are. His words for them are his words for us. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).
“Take my yoke . . . and learn from me.” There’s a mystery within his words. It seems to tell us, “Swap out this kind of work for another.” But then he qualifies it with, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” How is that possible?
He carries the load. He pulls the weight. And we submit to that yoke, to the life he asks us to live. We cease laboring under our burden for perfection, pursuing our visions of success to make God and ourselves proud, and instead we run to him, again and again. Surrendering to him in conscious prayer. Asking him to make us more like him, that our responses may be born out of compassion rather than ungratefulness.
Then when the hordes surround us, clamoring for attention and a snack, his love allows us to give grace rather than impatience. When we gratefully embrace the unexpected or inconvenient as Christ’s better plan for us, we find joy and peace.
Motherhood is hard. It’s not easy to shepherd human life on thirty minutes of sleep or navigate a teenager with mental health issues—but those things and more we lay at his feet. He offers rest. He offers joy in the midst of the hard. He supplies peace when we feel overwhelmed by expectations, unappreciated by family, or overworked by employers.
We give him our struggles and failures and fears—perhaps the same ones over and over, every hour, because our fingers grip on so tightly—but we offer them up in exchange for his yoke. For freedom from striving. Freedom from failure. We submit to his kind of life, one where we are not the center.
That’s where a mother’s soul finds peace.
[1] Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 1:21-38
[2] Mark 6:34
