Ep. 151 || Motherhood When We Can’t See the Outcome Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Laura: Hey, friends, Laura here. I'm excited to share today's show with you. In the daily grind of life, sometimes it's easy to forget God's beautiful and good purpose for the role of motherhood. Today, we brought on two people who spent considerable time studying the value of women in scripture to talk about God's purpose for motherhood and the way he used mothers throughout redemptive history. If that all sounds a little heady, let me assure you that today's guests also see and address the way this impacts our lives today and gives us the motivation to be faithful. God is working together his perfect plan, and we participate in that with faith even when we can't see what he's doing.
Today's guests are Elyse Fitzpatrick and Eric Schumacher, co-authors of Worthy: Celebrating the Value of Women. Elyse holds a certificate in biblical counseling from CCEF, and a master's in biblical counseling from Trinity Theological Seminary. She's a prolific author and a well-known speaker who loves to proclaim the good news of the gospel. She's also a mom to three grown children and a grandma to six. Eric is a husband and a father of five, a pastor, songwriter, and storyteller. In addition, he serves as one of the board members for Risen Motherhood and has been a great support to our ministry.
To find out more about them or their new book, you can visit our show notes at risenmotherhood.com or go to worthybook.org. Let's get to today's interview with Emily, Eric, Elyse, and the one person without any name, me.
Laura: Well, welcome to another episode of Risen Motherhood. Today I am so excited because we have the co-authors of the new book Worthy on the show today. We have Elyse Fitzpatrick and Eric Schumacher. Of course, Emily, my sister-in-law is here as well. Eric, Elyse, welcome to the show.
Elyse Fitzpatrick: Thank you.
Eric Schumacher: Thanks for having us.
Laura: We are really excited to get to chat with you guys today about a great topic. Before we do that, could you guys each just take a minute here to introduce yourself to our audience and let them know what a day looks like for you, what you're up to, just in case they're not familiar with your work?
Elyse: I am Elyse Fitzpatrick. What a day looks like for me is I am a grandma. Sometimes the day looks like me getting to hang out with my grandkids. I live in Southern California. We frequently get to do things outdoors, which is wonderful. I do some writing. I do some public speaking. When I'm not traveling or writing, I'm hanging out in Southern California with my kids and grandkids.
Emily: I love that. I think I said this on the show before, but every time we talk to a grandmother, I just think I aspire to grandmothering. It sounds fantastic.
Laura: It does sound like a nice life.
Elyse: I'll be honest with you, when my friends who are grandmothers used to say to me, "Just wait. It's so great." I would say, "Okay, I've had kids, I understand." But no, I didn't understand.
Laura: It's next level looking.
Elyse: It's a whole other deal.
Emily: It's so fun.
Emily: All right. What about you, Eric, not a grandma, Schumacher? [laughter]
Eric: Not a grandma. I do not aspire to be a grandma, but willing to be a grandpa one day. I am a husband, a father of five children with my wife, Jenny of 21 years and a pastor. My day is often one of me getting up in the morning, spending some time with Jenny and seeing the kids if they're not already off. Our oldest has a college class to go to at 7:30 in the morning, so sometimes I miss him. Then at church doing just a variety of things, sometimes I'm preaching, sometimes I'm planning services, writing liturgy, leading music, and then when I have a little spare time, I try to do some writing, writing books with Elyse Fitzpatrick, that's a thing. I write worship songs. I try to write articles and blog posts when I get the opportunity.
Laura: Well, let's get to today's topic. This is one that Emily and I, we love studying this topic, we love talking about it, and we love that you guys know so much about it. Today, we're going to be talking a little bit about the beauty and the value of women in the story of redemption. Maybe we start off here by just talking about motherhood as a concept in the Bible. Can you guys help us see where motherhood is introduced in the redemptive story? I know this is a big ask—
Emily: This is a big ask but we're going to go for it.
Laura: Because we don't have to answer it, you do. [laughter] How would you guys describe God's overarching purpose for motherhood biologically, but also spiritually?
Elyse: Motherhood, of course, is introduced at the very beginning of scripture. The promise that comes through motherhood is introduced with Eve after the fall when she is promised that she will be the one through whom the rescuer, the Savior will come. Motherhood is integral to the story of redemption.
Eric: Like Elyse said, motherhood is introduced right away. Even the idea in Genesis 1, where the Lord creates mankind, male and female, and he blesses them together, and he gives them a mandate to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion. Men and women together were tasked with exercising dominion over the world. As you think about your question, biologically and spiritually—“What's the role of mothers?”—you see that right there in Genesis 1, biologically, the earth had to be filled. Men and women had to have children.
Spiritually, they were tasked with ruling the world together, which means training up these children to know who the God is that they are created in the image of, and then what it looks like to rule the world in a way that reflects his glory and his worth. As Elyse points out, the first mention of a specific mother is in that gospel promise that the seed of the woman, her offspring, her child, her son, is going to come and crush the head of the serpent. Right there, the biological and the spiritual combined in a way that points directly to the gospel that a biological child, a real man is going to arrive on the scene and exercise a spiritual (and every other sort of) dominion over the face of the earth to redeem us all.
Laura: I appreciate you guys started right there at the beginning, and we see this picture painted. Can you guys carry that out throughout the rest of the Bible and see how that thread then comes to pass where we actually see that promise fulfilled?
Eric: Sure. I think I'll start with Eve, the first mother, who often gets a bad reputation for her place in the fall. I think it's overlooked as a remarkable example of what it means to be a godly mom. If you look at her in Genesis 4, the first recorded words after the giving of the promise in the Bible are Eve's. She says, "I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord," when Cain had just been born.
That's a remarkable statement of faith because she's acknowledging, God helped me get a man. In Hebrew, that word is Adam or Adam. She's essentially saying God has given us a second Adam. That's a statement of faith because he had just promised a son would be born. Here she is saying, even though he's conceived through normal human means, she's saying, "This has been God's help to give me this."
Then she has Abel. Of course, we know the story. Cain kills Abel. Her son who believes in the Lord and worships him has been killed. Her firstborn son spirals off into unbelief and his descendants become a line of people who are increasingly wicked. After that, she has their third son, Seth. She says after his birth, "God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel because Cain killed him." That's a really interesting statement that Eve says, another offspring because Cain is still alive, her biological son is still living, why does she need another offspring?
Eve is a remarkable theologian because what she's saying here is, "I understand that Abel was my offspring because he shared faith in Yahweh." She's the first one to speak that name in the scripture as well when she says, "This is with the help of Yahweh." She's saying, "I understand that though Cain is my biological son, he is not part of the offspring of the woman. He's part of the offspring of the serpent. He has departed in unbelief and wickedness." She's saying, "Here, God has been faithful to give me another offspring, a believing offspring."
Then we see through the line of Seth, that through his children, Genesis 4 ends with, “At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.” There's this organized, developing worship of Yahweh that really is springing from Eve's faith. Here the biological and the spiritual have combined where you have this mother bearing children, and through just remarkable pain and disappointment and hardship, her faith is steadfast and it's passed along to her children and generations to follow, and really all of us stand as children of Eve who have come to believe in the Messiah.
Elyse: Yes, that's so good. Then you take that and you put it up next to the genealogy of Jesus where you see there are only a few women's names who are mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus, but every one of those people had a mother. All of those mothers, some of them mentioned, and we should probably talk about how important those women were—every one of those people from Eve all the way through to the birth of the Messiah. Motherhood was integral.
Without motherhood, you would not have had the birth of the Messiah. Obviously, some of the people in Christ's genealogy were scoundrels. And yet, God was using women and has used women, and will continue to use women to accomplish his good purposes. All along from the very beginning with Eve, all the way up through the birth of Christ with Mary, and then continuing today.
Laura: Yes, I love that. I really appreciate just tying that into how everyone had a mother and that mother hopefully passed along her faith to the next generation. Eric, you were saying that of Eve, and all of us desiring to do that. I think that if there's a woman listening to the show, this is probably her heart's cry as well—to pass her faith along to the next generation. We know that's just a huge role for all of us. I'm wondering if we can dig in a little bit deeper to that here. Do you guys have any specific examples maybe of a woman we can look to in the Bible that did pass along her faith to the next generation, or something that we can model and how we can kind of apply that today?
Elyse: Of course, the really obvious person, aside from Mary, would be Timothy's mother and grandmother, Lois and Eunice. Twice Paul references them and how Timothy, who was the pastor of the church at Ephesus, really came to faith through their diligence in teaching him the truth. What's really interesting and might be very helpful for your women to understand, is that Timothy's dad was not a believer. Timothy's dad was a Greek. When Timothy and his family are being talked about, the dad is never mentioned as someone who taught Timothy scripture.
I'm sure that there are women who listen to your podcast, who maybe don't feel like they're in a relationship with their husband and maybe their husband doesn't ever do devotions or anything like that, they might wonder, "Can God salvage this?" Well, yes, because you've got this perfect example of someone where Paul, in essence, took him and acted as a father to him. You can have hope because Timothy, the pastor of the church at Ephesus, had an unbelieving dad and the witness of his mom and his grandmother was what God used to bring him to himself.
Eric: I think, just to add to that, as you look through the Old Testament story, there are a number of remarkable moms. If you're a Hebrew and you're reading through the Old Testament and you're watching this story unfold, waiting for the Messiah to show up, there are occasions where what you know to be the line of the Messiah that's leading up to David seems to be threatened. There are mothers who simply in fighting for their children, work to rescue that line from the danger that it's facing.
We can look at women like Tamar and Jochebed, the mother of Moses. We can look at Naomi. Then I think even we have hints with Bathsheba and then Solomon's wife, King Lemuel's mother in Proverbs 31. We see all these women who take actions that are courageous and full of faith to do what they can to have children, to preserve their children, to educate their children.
In the grand scheme of things, they're playing a remarkably strategic role in God's story of redemption, but what's interesting is I don't think any of them really had much of a clue how significant their actions were at the time. They were women who trusted the Lord, believed his promises and then were faithful in the context they found themselves in, whether that was having a child for their deceased husband or finding a husband for their widowed daughter-in-law, they were exercising covenant faithfulness in the moment, trusting in Yahweh's promises and God worked great things they could never see. I think that should encourage moms today as they wonder whether their work matters. We can't begin to see the significance of what God is doing through our regular faith and faithfulness day-to-day.
Elyse: That's such a good point, Eric. That's something I want to really talk a little bit more about and just emphasize that ordinary faithfulness—which we don't see the results of, let's say—just ordinary faithfulness is so important. We can feel like, "What's the big deal if I actually take care of these children or do all the things we need to do?" We don't know how the Lord is using that. He may be using that in their lives as they grow or may be using it even as an example for other women around us. It’s so important for women who are faced with ordinariness. I think also because we hear so much about how important it is to do great things for God—and doing great things for God is a good thing—but doing ordinary things for God is really what we're all called to.
Martin Luther said that when he changed a diaper—as a previous monk who then had children—when he changed a diaper, he knew that he was doing the work of God. We've really got to say those kinds of things to one another, that the ordinary thing you're doing today is God's vocation for you. It's how he is bringing his kingdom here on earth. You are kingdom ambassadors. Whether all you're doing today is making baby food for your child, you're doing kingdom work. That's kingdom work. It's so important that we don't lose sight of that, especially in this age of, "Do great things, make sure that you have 250,000 followers or something." I'm not saying that about you guys. [laughs]
Laura: No. We're cool. [laughs]
Laura: Absolutely. I want to stand on a chair and start clapping! This is so good.
Emily: I'm clapping into the microphone. Cut this later! [laughs]
Laura: To that point, we had a friend say to us recently something that I think was really wise. We're really not that good of a judge of what's big and what's small from what we can see. What we're doing that we would say is small may actually be big eternally.
Emily: What we think is big now, 250,000 followers or whatever it is, may not be that big eternally. It may go away.
Laura: Yes. When you were saying, "We want to do great things for God," I was thinking, the greatness is in every day, in being faithful every day. That is actually a lot harder than living in those big, bright, amazing moments. What's more difficult, what's probably making you more holy, sanctifying you, is staying the course for many, many years.
This is a conversation Emily and I've had just so much. It's not exactly where I thought we'd go today, but I love this. I think this is a really important conversation because so often it can be easy to desire to live for the next season when we think those kiddos will get a little bit older, and we'll have freedom or we’ll have a change in our schedule so that we're freed up to pursue our own dreams. But recognizing that ordinary faithfulness, that is what the Christian faith is built on. In the Bible and second century church and all through the generations, there are mothers doing ordinary work, and instilling their faith in the next generation. I'm so grateful because someone 2000 years ago said, "I'm going to teach my child about Christ and about God," because I'm reaping that benefit now, 2000 years later.
Eric: That's good. I just want to encourage moms who feel like they've blown it, that it's not too late for God to work through you. As I think about Naomi, in the book of Ruth, where she's been widowed and bereaved of her two sons and left with two presumably pagan daughters-in-law in the land of Moab, who are barren and haven't had children in 10 years of marriage. Everything that was big for a mom in Israel had been taken away and now she has to go back to Bethlehem, and she goes back bitter. She actually has told her daughters-in-law, "Why don't you go back to your old gods? Because the Lord's against me and there's nothing good for you." She's not passing along the faith to her daughters.
Ruth, of course, swears faithfulness to her and Yahweh and exercises this covenant faithfulness in caring for her mother-in-law. And then halfway through the book when Naomi is reminded there's a redeemer, her faith is flamed into action, and she's the one who then comes up with the plan of how to get Ruth and Boaz together. And from that marriage, of course, comes King David and ultimately, the Messiah, Jesus. Here's a woman who you could say, in some ways, has blown it in big ways in the way she's spoken about the Lord and failed to trust him, and the Lord isn't done with her as a mother. Her faith later in life is what the Lord uses in her daughter's life and in ours now.
Elyse: We're going to tag-team here, Eric. It is so important for us to see the necessity of ordinary faithfulness, but let's get real here. None of us, none of us are consistently faithful. If we can say that—Eric says that, I say that, I know you guys say that. None of us are consistently faithful and the really great news is, even though God does use our faithfulness, that's not what God's plan is predicated upon. It's not what your children's success in God's work is predicated upon.
Yes, it's important for us to embrace ordinary faithfulness in all the ways that we can. And yet, we need to understand that our children's salvation is not—I'm underlining that and italicizing it and highlighting it in my mind—is not contingent upon our consistent faithfulness. God uses people who are striving to be faithful on some days and other days, just not. But God will use all of that to bring our children to be part of the plan he has for them, and that's so relieving to us as parents because I know in my life, there are so many times when I failed miserably to be faithful. I was instead, demanding and idolatrous with my children, and yet God somehow uses our lack of that ordinary faithfulness to bring our children to where He wants them to be.
Emily: That's good. I think that from my heart that then propels me to want to go before him more often in dependence, and to run to him and enjoy him and give him an offering of praise, because who but God can do that? Who but God can orchestrate, even in and through our mistakes and our sin, something beautiful for His glory? I think that if anything, for the mom who's like, "Oh, well then, let me just throw my hands up." It's like, "In praise! Go to him in praise! Wow, that's incredible that the Lord can do this and preserve his name throughout all of his story." In this line that we're talking about, he's really the One who has preserved it. That's praiseworthy!
Eric: That's really what has revived these mothers that we're talking about and what's inspired their faithfulness. As Eve is saying, "The Lord's helped me," and Naomi is saying, "The Lord's not left us without a redeemer," they're not looking at themselves and their own track records. They're looking and saying, "God is still faithful, so I can keep going." That's what we need every morning when we sit up. We wake up with Satan sitting on our chest reminding us of all of our sins. We need to remember God's given us a redeemer, so we can live today.
Laura: Amen. This is so encouraging, and I feel like no matter if you felt like you've blown it, or you're having a decent day, just that reminder that it is all the Lord, it is all Him. He carries us, and I think that is wonderful motivation to continue to strive to pursue Him and to tell our children about him, about His goodness. I'm just really grateful for you guys reminding us of that today and just pointing out areas in God's word where we can see beautiful faithfulness of moms all throughout the generations. So, thank you guys for sharing that with us today and talking through that. Are there any last words that you guys would like to give to moms or just any charge that you would like to share with them?
Eric: What comes to mind is—this really struck me as we were writing the book, Worthy—in Luke 11, as Jesus is ministering, there's a crowd gathered around him and a woman shouts out to Jesus, "Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed." I think she's assuming the highest honor for a Jewish woman is to be associated with a son of high standing. Just like the mother of the sons of Zebedee comes to Jesus and says, "Will you let my sons sit at your right hand and your left hand?"
Jesus says, rather than blessed is the mother of the Messiah, “blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” He invites women not to find their status in his kingdom by relationship to biological offspring, and how their children succeed, and how the world views their sons and their daughters. He invites women and mothers to relate directly to God, through his word.
As moms, you find your true blessedness—as we all do—when you know the Word made flesh, who is Jesus, who died for your sins and rose from the dead, who's given you adoption and transferred you into the kingdom of God. He and the Father make their home in the midst of you through the Holy Spirit and dwell with you, and they're going to raise you from the dead to reign with him in a new heavens and a new earth forever. That's your status and that's your standing. You can rest in and rejoice in that every day of your life.
Elyse: I'm just going to say “Amen” to that!
Emily: Okay. Elyse, I heard that you gave an incredible message and picture of the new heavens and the new earth recently. Can you give us—on the heels of that, I'm stretching this a little bit further—just a little taste of what we have to look forward to as we are found in Christ?
Laura: Yes, do it!
Elyse: I think one of the problems that we have as Christians is that we've not really been given a picture of the concrete nature of the world to come. In other words, when people talk about heaven, they tend to think that what we're going to be doing is floating on a cloud, strumming a harp, or we're going to be involved in an eternity long song service. Honestly, as much as I love song services, that's not going to do it for me.
We have to schedule worship services here because all of our life here is not worship. We have to schedule it. In the new heavens and the new earth—which will be this planet, refashioned, remade, beautified, purged of all evil, wickedness, and sin—we will be on this planet in our glorified bodies, which will be not like a spirit floating. We will have actual bodies. We will recognize one another. How much will change in the resurrection? I don't know, except I know that they recognize Jesus. We will change.
Then maybe the four of us will be sitting around some afternoon near the Crystal River on the beautiful grass, sitting there talking about the Lord. The Lord will come walking up to us and we'll look up and we'll say, "Lord, we were just talking about you." See, all of that is worship. That's all worship, and he'll say, "Children, I brought lunch." We’ll sit down and have a picnic with him and he perhaps will tell us about how he formed a nebula with the word of his power and how the whole time our beings, our persons were in his heart and mind.
Here's what's going to be really, really cool—we won't have to worry about time. Do we have enough time to do this? We won't have to worry about, "My back hurts sitting here on this ground, I’ve got to get up." That's not going to happen. Certainly, we'll never be bored again. Imagine a world without boredom. The really great thing is, we won't worry about whether or not we're actually loved. We will know that we're loved and welcomed by Him, of course, but then also by one another. Imagine what those relationships are going to be like. Then who knows, maybe some animal, some lion will come up and lay down next to us and we'll get to pet his mane.
Laura: I have told Emily before that that's one of my dreams in heaven. You just articulated that—I can't wait to touch a lion mane.
Elyse: Wouldn't that be cool? I live in San Diego. We have the wild animal park here, and I have been there when a lion roared. It is so magnificent. It's so loud. To think that you could be next to that, without any fear on his part, or on my part, that the creation would no longer be cursed with hatred or sin or fear, but we would all be together.
Then, of course, to the moms, you will be with your children and your moms and dads as the Lord would bring them. I mean, how wonderful would that be? I'd get to sit down with my mom and my mother-in-law and talk about the Lord with them. Every minute of every day will be worship, it'll be so great.
Emily: I love that you kept using the word “imagine” because when we think of imagination, we're typically talking to our kids. I think there is this level of, particularly as the days get long and tiring, I realize what could be, as my imagination is directed by the Spirit when I'm reading the word. Of course, we're applying the word to think through what this might be like. That taste right there and the emotion that it brings up and the longing that it brings up really propels me forward into the day to want to love God like that now. As much as I can—I'm not going to be able to–but how can I taste that now? I just love that imaginative picture.
Laura: I talked with my husband just the other day and I was talking with him about how long eternity really is and how short this life really is. The days can feel so long, the years can feel so long. You can think, “man, if I make it 80 years, that's going to be so much time,” but really how little time we have here until we get to that picture that you are talking about, Elyse. As you said, Emily, it should propel us to live today for what we are waiting for someday and to realize that this life is really short. I tell myself a lot of times I can workout for 30 minutes, I can do it because I want the reward.
Emily: I can't do it! [laughing]
Laura: It's short in the scheme of things. I maybe can't make it three hours, but I can make it a half an hour. There is an element of having that perspective—our life today is a blip, like the tiniest dot compared to eternity. If I can just keep that in mind, I hope that at the end of my days, when I reach the gates of glory, I can say I gave it all. I gave it everything that I had. I put all my chips into the basket. I'm giving everything for Christ and his kingdom and his glory. I ran the race as hard as I could.
Eric: I think that is so encouraging as I think about having children. Elyse said one thing in her talk that really stood out to me, she said, "Imagine you'll walk up to a person who used to be your enemy, and that you'll give them a hug. You won't even remember what it is they did to you." I love that.
When I think about all the disappointments that we face in life. There's going to be moms listening whose relationship with their children might go wrong. It might not ever be fully restored, even if they both know the Lord. There could be a lot of awkwardness there and conflict and tension remaining, or mothers of disabled children whose children can't talk to them or do the things with them they want to do. But in the resurrection, all of that is straightened out and untwisted and made right. You get to run into them and speak with them. I'm getting emotional now.
Emily: No, we can't go there right now.
Eric: I think of all of that. I think, Laura, what you were saying about wanting to persevere as parents, as moms—the days and the years can feel so long and so hard, but we have so much good that's guaranteed us to look forward to, and it'll be worth it.
Emily: Well, this conversation went beyond what we thought, but—
Laura: I love it so much.
Emily: it's great. That's what we want to do at Risen Motherhood, just encourage ourselves as we encourage you guys who are listening to love the Lord, to walk in light of the gospel, right where we're at every day. We're just really grateful, Eric and Elyse, that you gave some of your time to share this with us and point us to our Savior, point us to the Messiah, and you have encouraged us in him today. Thank you.
Elyse: Thank you.
Eric: Thank you.
Laura: If you want to hear more from Eric and Elyse, head over to risenmotherhood.com. There you'll find links to all of their platforms, their new book Worthy, and of course, find us on social media at Risen Motherhood. We are on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Thanks, guys.