“Blessed is she who believed that the Lord would fulfill His promises to her.” Luke 1:45

What Mary Had To Learn

A Special  Mother’s Day Devotional

This morning started out like every other morning that is just like every other morning until it smacks you in the face. I went to the grocery store with my two youngest children. As we were checking out, the check-out lady asked me how old my youngest child is. I told her, “Twenty months.”

She said, “Oh, but he’s still a baby.”

I said, “Yes, he will always be a baby. They are all babies.  Even my 15-year-old is a baby.”

She said, “Yes, even my 25-year-old is a baby.”

This particular lady is one of the kindest, most soft-spoken women I have ever encountered. If she is working a register, I will go through her line. We usually talk lightly about our children. Today, since she mentioned that her baby is 25, I asked her if she has any grandchildren.

She said, “No, but my daughter is talking about having kids. She lives in Germany, though.”

I said, “You must miss her.”

She said that yes, she does. I asked her if her daughter pilots airplanes to different countries to get injured people out and bring them to the hospital in Germany.

My check-out lady has a baby who now gets into heavy metal contraptions and flies them through the air high above land and sea and touches down in places where people are killing each other with large deadly weapons to take out the injured parties and fly them somewhere else, and does this over and over again! And she will be doing it for the next two years!

Incredible.

So then I was feeling all the feelings and thinking all the thoughts.

How many times have I wished that my children will never decide to join the military. It’s just too scary. For me. For them, it’s probably an adventure and a lifelong dream. For them, it might be the calling that the LORD has placed on their life. And so I do not pray that He keeps them out of the military.

His plan for their life HAS to come before my own plan for their lives.  

My plan for all of my children would be for them to live in relative ease and comfort, the kind that I have never known and never missed, but we all want better for our children, right? I want them not to suffer in any of the ways I have, or experience the painful things that have served to deepen my sympathies and compassion for others, strengthen my character, and helped me to grow.

And at the same time, I want them to know and love Jesus with all of their being. I want them to fulfill what He has for them… as long as what He has for them involves living within a short traveling distance to where I live.

I decided when my first son was a toddler that I would not be one of those mothers-in-law to my adult children and their spouses. I’m all for the leaving me and the cleaving to their spouse. It’s just that their spouse will look at me as a sort of older best friend whose feet s/he wants to spend long hours sitting at to glean my wisdom. Right? And then go out for coffee together and stuff. Right? That sort of thing. I’m going to be a cool mother-in-law, the kind that respects my adult children’s space, does not put unhealthy demands on them, yet is readily available to babysit and to be home just in case, you know, they ever want to just stop in and say, “Hi, MOM!” on their way home from the grocery store or whatever. Because we’ll live in the same city, you see?

But I decided all of this before I actually had grown-up children. Truly, it only took a plus sign on a pregnancy test for me to have the life of the baby I JUST discovered existed all planned out for… him or her. As long as the child just STICKS TO THE PLAN.

I was never going to let my child wear shoes that had cartoon characters on them. I was going to be the nicest, kindest mother. And then my firstborn was actually born, and it seems she instinctively knew that I was the sensitive type, and so she went about trying to ruin that forever. It’s like she knew that I had been a compliant child myself, and did not understand why anyone would want to buck authority just to see if she could. And then I made the mistake of actually taking her to the shoe store with me, and she actually saw the shoes with the cartoon characters, and those were the only shoes I could get on her feet. In this way, my child began to raise me. So it went with the whole batch of them. It’s like I intended to cook eggs over medium, and what I ended up cooking was scrambled. With cheese on top.

As none of my children are yet grown-ups, this state of events makes me nervous. WHAT IF I actually am a decent mother? What if I’m decent enough that my children grow up feeling loved and treasured? What if they grow to love and seek the LORD based on seeing my example of how I love and seek the LORD? And then because I have done such a good and thorough job of training and raising and loving on them for all of these never-ending days of repetitive tasks and discipline, the children are actually confident and independent enough to trust that they will be okay in this world, as long as they are following God’s plan for their lives? Even in dangerous situations? And then I find out that my own little baby is moving to Germany? Or Zimbabwe? Or Utah, just because s/he feels that that is God’s plan for his/her LIIIIIIFE, and I can say, “Bye-bye, grandkids! I’ll see you every time I get over my fear of flying and empty bank account, WAAAAHHHHH!” 

Motherhood is not so much hard work as it is heart work. We may all mother differently, but we all mother from the heart. Whose babies grow up to be Fighter Pilots, Missionaries to foreign lands which contain non-curable, non-vaccinable diseases, or to in any way put their lives at risk to protect other lives and freedoms? What sort of babies grow up to contribute to making the world a better, safer place?

The babies who had the best mothers, that’s who.

One last thought that seemed obvious to me before I had children: Their lives do not belong to me. They belong to the LORD, who saw fit to make me their mother…to raise them, so that they could live the life HE planned for them before the beginning of the world. (I’m pretty sure that plan never involved their mother stepping in the middle of their path and getting in the way of their destiny.)

“Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: ‘This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.  And a sword will pierce your own soul, too’” (about Jesus, her first born child) (Luke 2:34-35).

Dear Lord Jesus, once again I choose to remember that my children do not belong to me; they belong to You. Help me to raise them well, using the unique gifting and insight and personality You have given me, and to never get in the way of Your leading in their lives. I thank You for granting me this greatest honor of motherhood. In Jesus’ name, Amen.