In the daily tending, weeding, and pruning of motherhood, we can point to the faithful Gardener who keeps and cultivates us too—from Eden into eternity.

Motherhood is a wondrous gift that brings you to the cross again and again. Enjoy this special song for Mother’s Day by Caroline Cobb.

As Christians we know our true source of joy is in Christ. So why are we still grumpy?

Sometimes we get so tired of the same sins, we want to just give up and stay where we are. But keep going back to the cross for grace, because Christ's forgiveness drives us to repentance.

Grief without the gospel leads to despair, but Christian grief holds onto hope. We know sin and death will one day end because we have the surety of Christ’s resurrection.

In the midst of dark storms like postpartum depression, a scary medical diagnosis, or shepherding a rebellious child, we can cling to these truths: Jesus understands us, he prays for us, and he will never fail or leave us.

‘You know, babe, I wish I could have known you would be all into this … birth stuff before we got married.’

We became pregnant just a few short months after our honeymoon, which unlocked inside of me what has become an enduring life passion: childbirth.

My favorite portion of Romans 8 is where Paul uses childbirth as a metaphor to teach us about our ultimate future glory.

‘For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God … For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.’

Whether it’s something as significant as a waiting to see a child to come to saving faith in Christ or something more temporal but strongly felt as waiting for a child to fall asleep (PLEASE!), we all know what it means to wait for something with eager longing.

But the waiting of childbirth—and, so, creation—is marked by groaning. This is not a comfortable waiting. It is waiting punctuated by great effort and, oftentimes, pain. The tension of ‘already but not yet’ is palabable in the delivery room. Every birth attendant knows that the baby is coming; but often as the hours or days of labor creep by, it is easy to fall into wondering if the baby will actually ever come

Christians are a people keenly aware that this world is not as it should be. When we look around and see hatred and bigotry, inequality and racism, poverty and wars, it would be right for us to literally moan, ‘When will Jesus redeem this once and for all!?’

Praise God that we have assurance that day IS coming—the baby WILL be born!—though it will be at an ‘hour no one knows.’

Just like a woman in labor, may we endeavor to put those groanings to work. May our groans sound like women who shout gospel truth through the labor halls of life. And may we know when we get to see our Savior face to face, it will be cause for infinite joy—a moment that will make the breathtaking moment of looking into the faces of our own children once they’ve been born pale in comparison.

“One of the first lessons a pilot learns is to trust his instruments over his feelings. A pilot’s feelings may mislead, but his plane’s instruments provide him the true information to keep him safe and focused.

Life sometimes feels like a flying in a storm, doesn’t it? We bump up against difficult circumstances, find our faith shaken by loss, lack, or trials; & struggle to reconcile the feelings we experience with the wisdom we know from scripture.

We reach out to social media & blogs like air masks to maintain some semblance of control when what we need is the lifegiving air of our hope in Christ.

But what does that mean? To ‘find our hope in Christ?’

When people talk about hope, it’s usually in uncertain terms. We hope that thing happens. We hope that situation changes. We hope, but we wait to know the outcome.

And since we can’t be sure of what will happen next, our hearts are tempted to look at our circumstances & assess God’s faithfulness to us by the state of our current realities.

‘Is there enough money in the budget?’ ‘Are my kids healthy?’ ‘Does my marriage feel strained?’ ‘Does God love me?’

But the result of circumstantial hope is despair. If we can’t be sure of an outcome, we feel an urge to self-promote & self-preserve in order to care for ourselves in the face of uncertainty.

The truth is, life is full of suffering, painful consequences of sin, & a general brokenness that affects every relationship, conversation, & trip to the grocery store with five kids under five.

But as Christians, we know hope in an unchanging & eternal Christ is a certain thing.

When we look at the cross, we see that God gave up his most precious Son to save his enemies who delighted in their rebellion. In Christ, we have a fixed point of God’s faithfulness to us.

If God has given us all that we need through Christ, will he let us falter when we grow weary in training defiant children or haven’t slept in seven months? When the weight of our feelings are crushing & we can’t see if we’re flying right-side up or upside down?

No, mama, he will not. Because Who we hope in was & is victorious.”

This is the second in a series of posts to demystify some of the most common gospel-isms we use in Christianity. What does it really mean to “remember the gospel” in your day-to-day life as a mom? Find out here.

"Although we’ve had the same food expectations for all of our kids, their tastes and preferences vary wildly. Not long ago, we jokingly nicknamed our twins, “farm-to-table” and our oldest son, “Mickey” (in reference to his love of the McDonald’s cheeseburger). It was all fun and games … for awhile.
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After a couple of weeks it started affecting their behavior and excitement about different foods. Like when our firstborn pushed away his broccoli—not because he simply didn’t like it—but because he was “Mickey.”
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This goes to show that what we call ourselves has power.
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We don’t think of ourselves neutrally, but instead, we see ourselves through the lens of, 'Mary, the angry mom,' or 'Julie, the messy person,' or 'Kayla, the A-type overachiever.' The more we repeat these and believe these labels, the more we live up to them.
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The power of personal identity is one of main reasons why God spends so much of the Bible telling us who we were created to be, who we are apart from him, and who we are in Christ. These foundational truths are the dot from which all the lines of our life flow.
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In Genesis, he tells us that we are image bearers, created as males and females, equal in worth but still distinct. As image bearers, we deserve dignity, respect, love, and life. 
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But in Genesis, we also see that Adam and Eve sin. As sinners, we deserve guilt, condemnation, separation from God, and ultimately death. It feels normal for most of us (especially once we’ve heard and believed the gospel) to be horrified and ashamed about this sinful aspect of our identity. 
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If God left us like this—image bearers enslaved to sin—the narrative of our lives would be irredeemable.
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But he intervenes by sending his son, Jesus, to purchase us at an unimaginably high price so that we could part with our old identity and be raised with him, identified with Christ. Our new identity—in Christ—means that we are redeemed image bearers.
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From the basis of our new identity in Christ, we love well, we look out for the interests of others, we forgive, we submit, and we pursue peace.
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God tells us who we are in Christ, not because we have arrived today, but because we will arrive when we meet Christ. The more we believe that—remembering our identity in Christ today—the more we can cast off lies and walk in the way we’ll walk for eternity. 
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So, the next time you hear someone mention your identity in Christ, let it be a reminder that you are a new creation in Christ, which is definitely a label worth remembering."
 

The truth is: we may sometimes feel helpless in motherhood, but because of Christ, we will never be hopeless.

I look down at my shoes, worn black Vans, and rub the dried formula off the toe. I hastily tuck my hair behind my ears and catch my baby girl smiling at me from the corner of my eye. I move to the stove to look down at the oatmeal I'm making for breakfast, stirring in raisins and obscene amounts of peanut butter to try to hold off the request for a snack for at least a couple hours.  

There's this thing I've noticed when you become a mom, it happens abruptly beginning with the first night of the first babe, yet I'd be willing to bet that most moms don't even notice it happening. It's subtle, a common thread among all of motherhood - but one that would rather not be noticed, not be plucked out and put on display.