With the gospel as our foundation, we’re free to enjoy the extra trimmings and traditions of Christmastime as biblical wisdom and personal conscience allow.

Delighting in God’s good gifts even in suffering doesn’t negate our pain—it helps sustain and guide us through it.

Unmet expectations around the holidays remind us of our need for divine rescue and God’s provision in Christ—the true reason for the season.

Having intentional conversations with our kids about special needs is a way to love our neighbors and honor the Lord.

Smartphones aren’t going anywhere, so we need a heart check on how we use them. Here are three things to remember as we hope to glorify God in all things—even opening apps and posting photos.

I yelled at my daughter the other day. Not a gentle ‘Don’t do that, honey,’ kind of correction, but an angry, ‘What on earth were you thinking?’ reaction.

She, in turn, yelled at her two year old brother for making her do it, and pretty quickly there was a lot of frustration going around for a little bit of spilled sparkling water. A simple misstep halted my child’s creative idea on a nice day, and there we were, yelling at each other as if the offense merited some sort of punishment.

After we cleaned up, I thought about how quickly that moment went from fun to frenzied. Rather than parenting my children with the patience and instruction they need, I responded to a common sibling squabble like I was one of the siblings. 

If a mama speaks out of the overflow of her heart, my overflow had been speaking loud and clear, pointing to the fact that I wasn’t guarding the sources filling my heart-well.

The problem is really simple: it’s me. My heart is. My misplaced worship is. The idolatry of my time and performance is. And the way I feed these things by comparing myself to other mothers, that’s the problem.

And the way I’ve sought to fill my life with the things God tells us will not satisfy—these are the barrier between me and the mom that I want to be. As I’ve escaped to worldly influences, I’ve robbed my soul of the fellowship with my Savior that it needs, and I’ve seen firsthand the difference between the overflow of a heart filled with treasure and a heart filled with idols.

Motherhood is one way God makes his goodness tangible, and I am learning each day that to be the mom I want to be, to experience that goodness, I have to begin with a posture of humility; which is sometimes as simple as the choice between one of the many temporary comforts fighting for my affection, and repentance. Simple, pure, childlike repentance of my sin. Because we’re all in need of saving from the thing that keeps us from God and from one another.

But the best news for all of us is that grace is already there.

See miss, he’s not even looking up at me,’ the doctor bluntly observed. ‘All the signs of autism, and that is my diagnosis. I will go write this up.’ He shut the door behind him, and the numbness set in.

I was not surprised at his words—they were confirming something we had been fairly sure of for the better part of a year. But I also knew in the moment they left his mouth that everything was changing, and changing for the long haul.

So many mothers know this moment, when the paradoxes of walking with a perfect Savior in a far-from-perfect world set in. Everything changes and nothing changes. Your dreamed of future fades quickly out of sight for one that is impossible to picture, but your day-to-day life goes on as it always has—changing diapers and making dinners and folding clothes.

And then the hard questions come: ‘If God only does what is right, why would he allow something so wrong?’

Rest assured, mamas, that we are not the first to ask the hard questions.

This is our bent as humans: we want the answers. We want to know why God would allow us to carry hard things; we want the reason he feels far away, and we want someone or something to blame. But God does not always answer us with why.

He does, however, always remind us Who.

Jesus’ response to the limited perspective of his disciples introduces an entire new paradigm when it comes to disability. It’s as if Jesus is telling us to think about the circumstance differently. ‘Don’t look for the cause,’ he implies, ‘look for the future purpose.’

For a special needs mama, the parenting journey does look different, and in so many ways it is uniquely challenging. But God is completing his work for his perfect purposes so that his glory might be displayed in the broken vessels of an unqualified mom and a differently-abled child.

The most beautiful and honoring thing we can offer to a perfect Savior is not well-performing children but simply the acknowledgment that apart from Jesus, we can do nothing.

When we are at the end of ourselves, which is easily where special needs parenting—well, all parenting—can bring us, we are right where God wants us.”