Mothering Through Physical Limitations

I lugged the twenty-pound bag of mulch through the house, leaving a trail of black water droplets across the hardwood as I went. “This isn’t so heavy,” I thought. “My hands just can’t get a good grip on it.” I had set out to make over our backyard: three perimeter garden beds and a little patch of grass (read: weeds).

What I had planned to spend an hour doing, though, took two. Within the first few minutes, I noticed my hands struggling to grip weeds tightly enough to pull them out. “Maybe it’s these gardening gloves,” I lied to myself. “They’re just getting in the way.” “Or maybe,” I pondered, “I just wore myself out carrying those bags of mulch.” 

It wasn’t gloves. It wasn’t worn-out muscles. It is twenty-five-year-old hands that are succumbing too early to hereditary arthritis. It’s hands in their prime that can’t seem to carry out the prime-of-life goals of a young wife and mother.

I’ve heard plenty of people share about changes in their physical capacity as they age—but none of those people were my age. Those have always been distant realities—ones I’ve even imagined avoiding with regular exercise and a good diet. “I shall not be bound by such limitations,” I’ve thought, as I picture myself running marathons in my seventies. Yet here at twenty-five, my hands betray a reality I’ve not wanted to face: I, too, am human.

Wasting

To be human means to be created with good physical limitations, but in light of the fall, to also face physical capacity changes, deterioration, and weakness. Paul speaks of these changes in a negative way: “Our outer self is wasting away . . . ” (2 Cor. 4:16, emphasis mine). 

As we reflect on Genesis 1 and 2, we see that the human body was originally made for this earth, to thrive in it. But it’s for this reason that the curse of Genesis 3 is such a curse. Adam and Eve would no longer find the earth a hospitable home, for it was now tainted; they would eat of the ground in sweat and in pain. For Eve, fulfilling her calling to bring life into the world would also be marked by pain. Humanity’s physical suffering would serve as a constant reminder that something was not right in this world. 

The “wasting” of our post-fall bodies grieves me. It grieved me in my garden that Saturday morning as I wrestled with weeds. It grieves me on flare-up days when I struggle to pick up my little boy. It grieves me to feel pain in two appendages I need for every little thing. What will my life look like in five years? If we have more kids? If I can’t hold my babies? This sort of capacity deterioration has the power to crush me, especially as I consider the possible worsening of my condition—the increase in my limitations.

Nothing Wasted

God knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust, and he also knows how much we need tangible reminders of truth.[1] And as I look at my hands, I am reminded: 

We will never find a real, lasting, fulfilling home here on this earth. All our attempts to find soul-satisfaction in material possessions, physical accomplishments, friendships, or a spouse or children will ultimately leave us searching for more. 

Creation is presently groaning more than singing, crying out more than rejoicing.[2] Our bodies join in this chorus of groaning, undergoing change and decay as they experience the weight of a fallen world for which they were not made. Creation sings now, too, as the heavens declare God’s glory—yet there is a sweeter singing beyond every earthly horizon. There is a kingdom and a King, “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17-18). 

Christ ushered in this kingdom when he walked the earth. His ministry was punctuated by gifts of physical healing. As he touched the eyes, mouths, and feet of world-weary bodies, he offered them glimpses of a heavenly world, physically and spiritually. He also experienced a physical death and a physical resurrection, into which we join with him now spiritually and, one day, bodily. 

As I look at my hands, I’m reminded that limitations clarify our purpose. We could rage against the wasting of our flesh and persist in pursuit of an earthly physical capacity the Lord has not allowed for us right now, but, ultimately, that’s a fight we won’t win. Instead of prioritizing earthly treasure that doesn’t last, we can learn to accept our limits, choosing to believe God’s promise that “the lines have fallen for [us] in pleasant places,” and indeed, “[we] have a beautiful inheritance”—not of this earth (Psalm 16:6).

Our bodily wasting is one more reason to long for heaven and one more proof that this world is not all we have. 

Living in the Meantime

Our experience of motherhood may be affected if our physical capacities change, but we can see God’s providence even in this. He has uniquely equipped you for the tasks he has for you and not for the ones he doesn’t. No new or worsening bodily limitation can hinder your ability to seek and serve him in the ways he has prepared for you today or tomorrow.[3] 

As my hands weaken, this will mean changes in priorities, hobbies, and opportunities. And there will likely be many days where their weakness will in some ways break my heart—Paul calls it wasting for a reason. But I pray there will be more days where I receive this physical reminder as a focusing of my purpose in this life and a signpost of where I’m headed. To borrow from C.S. Lewis, it stands to reason that if our physical bodies cannot endure in this world, they must have been made for another one.[4] 

Looking Forward

The world groans against our physical decay, generating and investing in any diet, cream, exercise, or procedure that might assuage or reverse its effects. And certainly, it can be wise stewardship to pursue common grace means of healing or strengthening our bodies to be better equipped for service to the Lord and our families. But, ultimately, we must recognize that wasting bodies are all we’ll know this side of eternity. Through Christ, though, that is not where we’ll stay.

In Jesus, physical limitations remind us of what’s temporal and call us to rejoice in what’s eternal—what’s being renewed day by day within us and what will be made new in glory. All these signs of bodily wasting reveal that we are one step closer to being raised, first in soul and then in body, to resurrection life, "when we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51).  

In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, this mortal, wasting, arthritic body will put on immortality, and you and I shall be changed.

[1] Psalm 103:14

[2] Romans 8:19-23

[3] Ephesians 2:10; Philippians 2:13

[4] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity