You are not your own… therefore glorify God. (1 Cor 6:19–20)
My Dearest Daughters,
There is a unique kind of weariness that’s different than the healthy weariness of hard work. It is the fatigue of striving. Striving is what a person does when she’s not yet sure who she is or where she belongs. A woman who knows she’s loved and fitted in relationships within God’s design, a woman who’s rooted and claimed, can work very hard without becoming overwhelmed. But the woman who has not yet accepted her God-given identity keeps grasping for it, trying to prove her worth through achievement, performance, or admiration. Striving is often the sign of a heart that doesn’t feel at rest in fully embracing the definitions and parameters of her place.
Where do we belong? In our culture, people are proud to say,
“I’m a doctor, and I belong to Ascension Medical Group,”
or,
“I’m an attorney, and I belong to this law firm.”
And there is nothing wrong with that. God calls men and women into many vocations—to heal, to teach, to build. These callings can be a ministry from God when they are received as a service and stewardship of the kingdom of God.
But to say with the same confidence,
“I am a wife, and I belong to my family”—that often feels inferior or too simple. It sounds dependent and unaccomplished.
Why is this?
I believe it is because the human heart, broken by the Fall, has a tendency to seek identity in what it can achieve rather than who it belongs to and the gifts it has been given. We are much more comfortable belonging to institutions we choose rather than to relationships that are givens for us. We are tempted to anchor our worth in titles we earn instead of in covenants we keep.
And the deeper danger lies doesn’t lie in vocation itself, but in finding our identity outside of relationships ordered according to God’s transcendent design.
The ancient temptation is and has always been to self-define. The quest to define oneself apart from God-given belonging is, at its root, a quest for godhood. It is the same sin that caused Lucifer to fall. He was created with perfect beauty and wisdom—yet the place he was given was not large enough for him. In coveting the place of God, he fell, and became the driving force behind every human attempt to author their own identity apart from submission to God’s design.
Without me realizing it, that same impulse once lived in me.
The moment I came to see it, years ago, was perhaps the most liberating experience of my life, a moment that freed me from aimless striving and frustration. After the birth of my third child, I felt I had reached the breaking point. Three children three and under—and only two hands. Before that, I prided myself in being put-together, punctual, scheduled, and organized. Suddenly there was chaos everywhere, and I was embarrassed. I tried to hide from your daddy that things were falling apart.
One evening he left the house to take care of something. All three babies ended up screaming in my lap, and I was crying with them. And then Dad walked back in; he’d forgotten something. He took one look and asked, “What’s wrong?”
I blurted out, “I’m failing in everything, and everybody is unhappy about it!”
He was in a hurry and grabbed what he came for, then opened the door to leave. But then he paused, turned around, and said:
“Honey, there’s a big difference between doing ‘the mothering thing’ and being a mother.”
And he left, but the voice of God stayed, and in that moment, I felt Him speak to my heart:
“There’s a big difference between doing ‘the Christian thing’ and being a Christian. You have to be owned by this—possessed by it. You can’t live in a capsule of self, full of your own ambitions, and serve from there with joy. This is where I test how much the kingdom matters to you: right here with these little ones who are yours but really Mine.”
I looked at my children crying in my arms and suddenly felt that Helen, Blair, and Andrew owned me. And God owned me. And instead of suffocating, it was comforting and clarifying. I felt that I belonged to them and to the purpose of God—completely.
And then came an even more astonishing realization:
If God possessed me, then I possessed His purpose. The destiny He intended to bring about through our family was mine. And if it failed, I would feel it in the deepest part of me, because it mattered more than my own ambitions ever could. I had been honored to participate in what God was doing. I didn’t need to survive it. I needed to seize it with passion.
That sudden conviction that I belonged entirely to this calling was the most liberating moment of my life. I felt power. I didn’t need to escape, or find independence. I’d found the power to change identities. I could stop doing some mothering on the side while quietly seeking another identity for myself. Instead, I thought:
This is what I was born to do—
to bring these children into the kingdom of God,
to help them find their place in the temple of God,
and to be part of building that temple.
I am owned by this.
I belong to it.
I will never try to opt out of it!
And I will give it everything I have.
I knew that if any of you—now eight instead of three—were to find your purpose in God, if even one became a Moses or an Esther, then by loving you with my whole heart, I would have changed the world.
Your Granddaddy Blair discussed in his book Knowing God by Name that when God purposed to change the world, He chose one man and taught him what it meant to be a father and a family. Coming out of pagan Ur, Abraham didn’t know how. Sarah didn’t either, but God taught them.
And Scripture reinforces identity through relationship:
Sarah, the wife of Abraham
Eliezer, the servant of Abraham
Isaac, the son of Abraham
Each one of these surrendered their personal identity into God’s purpose, and in doing so, found identity.
And then there is Hagar the Egyptian. She never laid down her own Egyptian identity. She never surrendered her place into God’s household, and so she mothered the work of the flesh—a “wild donkey of a man” who persecuted the promise.
This is the secret that set me free:
True anointed motherhood becomes possible when our identity is utterly surrendered into God’s purpose.
Family life becomes a joy, instead of overwhelming chaos, when belonging is the calling.
The kingdom of God begins to come into the home when every competing identity bows down in surrender to His dominion.
And when it does, you will find both the joy and the power to do it!
With all my love,
Mom