Unexpected Challenges, Unexpected Good
It was Sunday, and I was solo parenting in a dimly lit back row of the school auditorium where our church met for worship. My husband, a pastoral intern, served upfront that morning, and I struggled to keep my thoughts fixed on the lyrics, let alone my heart tuned to the Lord. Suddenly, our toddler darted.
“Excuse me . . . thank you . . . I’m so sorry,” I apologized to fellow churchgoers as they made room for me to navigate the narrow passage. Wearing an infant in front, I watched despairingly as the distance between us and the escapee increased. Just a few more steps, and my son might be out the door and on his way to the dangers of the parking lot.
That wasn’t the first—or the last—of my many nerve-wracking moments of motherhood. Mom-life is full of unexpected twists and turns. Whether you and I weave our way through a church aisle chasing a toddler or run after the heart of a struggling teen, face a child’s challenging behavior or receive a serious medical diagnosis, a lot of times, we can’t see what’s up ahead or how things will play out. Yet God can use the unexpected challenges of motherhood to bring an even more unexpected glory and goodness to our lives.
What Did We Expect?
Despite reading books and websites to prepare me, motherhood isn’t what I expected. It hasn’t delivered all that I hoped it would, and instead, it’s given me some things I never asked for. What about you? Has motherhood been all you dreamed it would be?
While being a mom is a desirable and godly calling,[1] because of the fall, it’s also one that exposes our hearts to the wounding arrows of suffering and grief.[2] The pain we experience bringing children into our homes—either through birth or adoption—is only a foretaste of the hardships we experience as moms who parent in a broken world.
In Scripture, we discover truth that is sufficient to explain our suffering as moms (think of creation and the fall) and sustain us in it (think of the hope we have because of Christ’s resurrection and promised consummation). The Bible assures believing mothers that our pain isn’t in vain. Rather, it “is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18). No matter how confusing the middle parts of our stories seem, we look forward to a very good ending when God “will wipe away every tear” from our eyes (Revelation 21:4).
It may look different than you or I expected, either because we don’t have what we hoped for or we have what we didn’t see coming, but Christian motherhood is by faith, a faith that sees a trustworthy God weaving our stories into his story of grace and glory.
God Is Doing Something Good
Even though motherhood is full of the unexpected, Christian moms can expect God to be who he says he is and to do what he’s promised to do. No matter how confusing or uncertain our circumstances may be, God is still good (Exodus 33:19), and he is doing something good. Romans 8 helps us see this more clearly.
As John Piper says, God’s Word is “utterly wide-eyed to the sufferings of the world,”[3] yet, at the same time, the Lord uses our motherhood trials to fit us for heaven and for fruitful lives on earth. God uses unlikely people (including our children), situations (at church, home, and school), and things we couldn’t have dreamed up for his good purposes. He redeems even seeming interruptions and detours, sleepless nights and hospital stays, to prepare for us a future-oriented glory.
What is this glory? It isn’t ethereal but something our Lord prepares for us to tangibly partake of. As we suffer with Christ, we will “also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:17). We will one day taste “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). And though this is a future reality, it’s as certain as our salvation, for “those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:30). Notice the past tense. In God’s book, our glory is so sure that it’s as good as done.
But that’s not all. God is also working for our present good. Even now, his Spirit “helps us in our weakness” (Romans 8:26). When we don’t know what or how to pray for our children, he “intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). When we can’t express what we’re going through, he who “searches hearts” also knows God’s will and asks accordingly—on our behalf (Romans 8:27). What’s more, consider this life-giving, assurance-boosting promise: “For those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
More Like Jesus
God can use all things—even the difficulties and heartaches of motherhood—to make us more like Jesus:[4]
1. To teach us to pray like Jesus.[5]
2. To make us depend on God’s Word more than food.[6]
3. To share his sufferings and know his comfort.[7]
4. To remember earth isn’t our true home.[8]
5. To strengthen our faith.[9]
Sisters, God is for us, not against us, and nothing can separate us from his love.[10] “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).
That Sunday morning, a church friend caught my child before he encountered harm. Instead of shame, I felt seen and cared for. Someone was looking out for us, and the Lord was watching over all of us. Our family soon started practicing for Sunday mornings at home, and as we sought to train our children, my husband and I also prayed the Lord would capture their hearts. In the end, the Lord brought unexpected good for our family out of that difficult moment. And he has been faithful to do the same in much bigger trials and longer seasons of crisis we’ve faced as well.
Whatever motherhood challenge we face today, we can fix our eyes on the Lord and bring it to him. God is still good, he is doing something glorious, and we can trust him.
[1] Genesis 1:28
[2] Genesis 3:16
[4] Romans 8:29
[5] Mark 1:35; Luke 22:42, 44
[6] Matthew 4:4
[7] 2 Corinthians 1:5
[8] Mark 1:14-15
[9] Hebrews 12:1-2
[10] Romans 8:31, 37-39
