A Disruptive Welcome

In all the years before I became a mother, I had dozens of images in my head about what motherhood would be like. I pictured family dinners around the table, two parents praying at bedtime, and repeating Scriptures over my kids that reminded us of both God’s love and direction for our lives. I daydreamed about vacations by the beach, matching outfits for family pictures, and weekends at the soccer field with orange slices and juice boxes and the smell of sunscreen. Hypothetical motherhood, man. It was real good. 

Of course, I knew there would be late nights and scary fevers and sibling squabbles too. I could foresee plenty of challenges right alongside all those picture-perfect ideals. But if I’m being honest, they were challenges of the manageable sort. The kind a good Christian girl could handle because a good Christian girl would never be given more than she could handle, right? 

I’d like just one moment with whoever started that nonsense rumor. 

Because today, I am faced daily with things I not only never expected but know good and well I cannot handle on my own. Sensory rooms full of swings and bean bags and headphones. Leaving places with a screaming and too-big-to-carry ten-year-old holding my arm. IEP and Behavior Intervention Plans. All too regular trips to the pharmacy. Self-injurious behavior that has more than once left a hole in the wall or drawn a small crowd of onlookers. And the bone deep exhaustion of going to bed knowing that the next day, I have to do it all again, alone. Because for me, and for so many other women, motherhood is now largely defined by one profound adjective: single motherhood. 

But I am also a Christian, and nothing is impossible with Christ, right? So somehow, shouldn’t I be able to manage this life he has given me—the one that is both breathtakingly beautiful and painfully hard? 

What if I tell you that I can’t? 

Because what I’ve learned in the last few years is this: I do not—I cannot—make it through one day of my life without the love, prayer, gifts, talents, and tangible support of the body of Christ. 

My family—me and six loud kids, along with the wild card of disability—is a small to large disruption nearly everywhere we go. My son needs many accommodations to thrive in places like school and church, my toddlers need lots of corrections and consistent reminders not to hit each other, my pre-teen needs her eyes redirected off the myopic tendencies of adolescence, and I need extra hands. So many extra hands. And this isn’t even mentioning my own habit of losing my temper and needing to ask for forgiveness daily. It’s a lot—dare I say, it’s too much—to handle all on my own.

But over and over I am learning we all need to get better at two things: asking for help and offering help. Pride will keep us from asking, and selfishness may keep us from offering, but everywhere we go, there are opportunities to use what we have—to lock arms with others and make the load someone is carrying a little lighter. You can call it biblical hospitality, but because it’s rarely easy or seamless to “see needs and meet them,”[1] I like these words: a disruptive welcome. Because opening our hands, hearts, and homes could very well cost us something.  

Making someone feel that they are welcome in your home even if their son rocks back and forth hitting his head on your walls—that’s disruptive. Seeing the single mom walking into church and running out to the parking lot in the rain to grab the hands of her youngest to help her—that’s disruptive. So is offering to clean someone’s home when yours isn’t perfect either. Making a nice dinner for the new family on your street even if that means your kids get cereal that night because you didn’t make enough for everyone. Volunteering at the shelter even when you had a stressful week at work. Donating money even when the budget is painfully tight. All of it runs into our desires for controlled schedules, clean homes, and predictable budgets. It’s all disruptive. It’s all costly. 

And it is life-changing for the person on the other end. 

1 Peter 4:8-11 says, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace . . . in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ” (emphases mine). 

In the aftermath of a painful divorce and the complexities of rebuilding my life while holding the needs of six children, the fact that we are all standing and thriving today is evidence of brothers and sisters who have shown me a “disruptive welcome” without grumbling. My life is proof that when everyone uses their gifts and resources—whether that is cooking a meal, driving someone to an appointment, sitting with a hurting friend, volunteering, providing foster and respite care, supporting financially, sending a letter—any willingness at all to let your life and plans be disrupted for the building up of another person—restoration of the most devastating stories is possible. 

I often joke with my friends that I feel like I’m running through my days with my hair on fire. They withhold judgment and laugh a little, and then say, “How can I help?” This, friends, is why God intended for us to do life together: because none of us can make it alone. God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, because he gives us each other. God’s glory is able to shine through all the cracks in my life that other people helped me glue back together. What a grace. 

Nothing about my life looks like I thought it would all those years ago, when a family was still a daydream and a Pinterest board. I’ve never taken my son with disabilities on one of those vacations I pictured, and the two attempts we made at family pictures with coordinating outfits were a level ten disaster. But what I do have—a community of people that has welcomed me through every up and down, no matter how much it disrupted their plans—is so much more satisfying than a few days at the beach. I know now that what I was imagining motherhood to be was the surface, not the substance, of a good life. Because ultimately, selflessness is what makes life beautiful.

Let’s be people who welcome the disruptions to our lives, seeing opportunities to serve and give and engage with love and generosity, even when it’s not easy. After all, when did God ever say it would be easy? He didn’t. But to do kingdom work, for his glory and our good? It’s always, always worth it.

[1] A quote from the brilliant Laura Wifler