Quarantine and the Refiner’s Fire of Motherhood
It happened. My husband got Covid-19 and I was quarantined at home with the kids for 12 days. Away from him. Away from everyone else. My back against the world, facing two wild toddler boys whose energy erupts from the walls.
I have a public ministry and I talk a lot about God. It is one thing to say that God cares about who we are becoming, it is another to surrender to the refiner’s fire in order to become that person. And in the fires of motherhood I was tested. And I came up wanting.
I wish I could tell you I handled it with utmost holiness and clung to God for His patience and strength. I didn’t.
I boiled over many times. Lost at sea. Surrounded by waves of endless tantrums and messes and fighting and snacks and demands. I lost my patience. I lost my ability to think clearly. I lost myself.
I was not particularly profound or lofty in my thoughts towards my children or God. I didn’t turn to Him when I could have.
But even so, Jesus was shaping me through the pummel stone of my children railing against me. Little by little He was chipping away my selfish ambition, my need for control, my trust in my own agenda, my idol of needing to be seen and appreciated by others.
Becoming A Mother Servant
With each time I broke up a fight, prepared a meal, folded a load of laundry, or read a story, I was being formed to look more like the suffering servant who,
“Being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death - even death on a Cross”
An Unseen
Unappreciated
Selfless
Human
Servant
He demanded nothing for himself. He gave himself up for the needs of others. He was led where he did not wish to go, but went anyway. He chose to receive the circumstances the Father had given him and chose to accept and submit to them instead of railing against them. He chose love and surrender. He chose grace. He chose to put the needs of others above himself.
Are there any other circumstances that can teach us this better than motherhood?
The Downward Way
Though God was God, he took on the form of a lowly human being. He went downwards.
And can I be honest? Taking on the form of a mother feels like a demotion sometimes. It is a downward trajectory.
It is not the lofty work celebrated on platforms or cheered on by upward mobility. It is not the kind of station in life that receives praise and accolades. It does not qualify you to speak on large stages or meet important people.
It is a downward step of becoming unseen and human like Jesus - bodily fluids and all. During quarantine, I wiped bottoms and got poop on my hands. I got peed on by my potty training toddler. I wiped boogers. I cleaned dishes. I picked up countless articles of clothing and toys daily. I was jumped on, kicked, and hit. And yes, I was also hugged and kissed too.
It is menial, mundane, human work. And it is the work of Jesus.
It is the trajectory and direction Jesus took as He descended from the lofty heavens to the lowly dirt of our humanity.
Is it possible that in surrendering to the downward descent of sacrificial and unseen work in motherhood, we actually look more like Jesus? I think so.
But the world won’t tell us that. The world will tell us that we are missing out because we aren’t firing on all cylinders right now. That we are falling behind. That we are missing the mark. That we are failing to keep up.
“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him”
The Wisdom of God and the Foolishness of the World
There is something comforting in the fact that God chooses the lowly, menial, mundane, and human things in this world to reveal His glory. It is the way His Kingdom comes.
What does this say to us who live in Instagram and Facebook worlds with social followings and jobs, even ministry ones that put us on a stage? Human wisdom says that you must be smart, successful, gifted, and a workaholic to earn value. We are measured by numbers.
But according to Paul,
“The wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.”
- 1 Corinthians 3:19
It is the Cross that is the wisdom and power of God. It is the self-sacrificing, laying down, emptying of self that reveals who God is.
According to the wisdom of the Cross,
the work of motherhood is not an obstacle to our vocational calling.
It is our calling.
To lay ourselves down.
Over and over and over again.
Our children are not “getting in the way” of ministry or our dreams. They are the way of ministry. And they are forming us to be ready for our dreams. They are shaping us to look more like Jesus as we do the work we were called to do. So that when we pursue our vocational calling, we do it with the right heart.
One day our work will be shown for what it is. And guaranteed it won’t be measured by what shows up on our Instagram feeds or in our work reports or task lists.
“It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work...He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God”
Our children refine our work, they refine the motives of our heart because they teach us how to die to ourselves.
Shaped Like the Kingdom
In motherhood, we are called to bear our children’s burdens in love, to lay ourselves down, to nurture, to protect, to care for and delight in. And to make room for their thriving.
Is this not the same calling we have for all people in the Kingdom of God?
As mothers, we cannot choose into our responsibility to love, it is what it means to be a mother. Of course we will love and care for our children. They are utterly dependent on our love, care, and protection.
We are bound to them and they to us.
But they teach us that this is how the family of God is. We are bound to one another in co-suffering love. We cannot choose in or choose out in God’s family. We are bound to one another like we are bound to the needs of our own children. They are ours and we are theirs.
Perhaps when this pandemic is over, we may emerge amidst the fog of cheerios and unfinished homework, amidst the swamps of clothes heaps and toys scattered across the floor with more to offer our world than what we had thought.
As we look back on this prolonged season, maybe we will discover that God cares less about what we do, and more about who we are becoming along the way.
Are we becoming more like Jesus as we lay ourselves down in unchosen circumstances in this pandemic? Or are we becoming something less than ourselves in our search to be seen and rewarded by the world?
While everyone is “getting ahead” and becoming productivity geniuses while we feel like we are drowning under the demands of our children, perhaps we are learning something more vital, more critical than those getting ahead.
Perhaps we are learning to live the wisdom of God instead of the wisdom of this world. Perhaps we are embodying the truth that the work of the Kingdom doesn’t always reveal itself in progress and met goals, but is the kind of work that the Father seeks.
The wisdom and power of God is not revealed in how many emails we send, or the projects we complete. It is not in the tasks we accomplish or the people we know. Nor in how large our ministries become or how many people attend our events.
It is in the heart that yields and surrenders to God amidst any circumstance.
It is the hidden work that no one sees where you become more like Jesus and reveal Him to the world.
This is real saint work.
Mother Saint
We are a gathering of reeds that bend and break.
Waking with the dawn to console the cry
and release songs into the fading light.
We have tended the wounds of the least of these,
Gathering them into our arms to see
vast expanses of wonder and delight
and orbs wet with the strain of fighting against oneself.
We have felt the battering rams of tantrums
thundering against our bodies
bruised and tired with ungratefulness.
And yet we sigh and continue on unseen
loving, shaping, beholding,
Folding piles of laundry like stacked heaps of hay
That no one will ever see.
And gazing out over the expansive harvest field
Ripe for the picking beneath our roof.
We emerge like Shadrach, Meeschech, and Abednego from the fire.
The flames that we thought might consume us
Only burnt our ropes.
What feels like a trap is our unleashing,
And our discovery.
Formed by bending low to scrape the marinara sauce
splattered and dried over the inside of the fridge,
the remnants from a willful toddler urgent to do it himself.
And discover that we too
Need to be led, led, taught, loved.
Need to be held, seen, cherished.
Need to learn again to wrestle down anger and breathe
And to play nice with others.
When we have forgotten about the
messes we cleaned up, the tears we wiped,
the fights we broke up, the bodies we cleansed,
we will hear him say,
“Well done, good and faithful servant,
I was hungry and you gave me something to eat.
I was naked and you clothed me.
I was a stranger and you invited me in,
I was sick and you looked after me.
I was there in your little one’s relentless needs
And in caring for them, you cared for me.”
