This morning was one of those mornings I didn’t have a single moment to myself: I got up, fed my children (an annoyingly messy) breakfast, then cleaned up from said breakfast. I got on the floor at my son’s request and placed racecars with him, then played boats and mermaids with my daughter; I tried to stretch my sore back but it resulted in being transformed into a jungle gym; I tried to have 10 minutes of devotions but found I was, instead, disciplining little humans for chucking toys and damaging property; I fulfilled my promise of the previous day to draw with the children, and I exhaustedly read them four books before telling them it was time for them to have their own book daily book time, (which was met with great protest.) By the time I shut the door, I was drained – done – and it was only 12:45…
But in the last few days I was mercifully reminded that act of motherhood is really playing the long game; it’s making those little minute by minute, day by day, and even second by second decisions that seem meaningless or thankless in the moment, but have eternal repercussions. I was reminded that if we, as mothers, can muster up the courage to face the endless diapers, the every-day preparations for after-school snacks, the sitting down at the dinner table to converse every night, the staying up too late to make sure our teen gets home safely and makes curfew…. Or if we can endure the swirling chaos of noise and sibling squabbles, or the sulky silence of the pre-teen who slammed the door in our face five times that day, that the act of our faithfulness to our children will teach them to better understand the faithfulness of God.
I believe that our refusal to give up on them will teach them that God doesn’t give up on us; our day-to-day sacrifices will example God’s sacrifice, and our love for them, worked out every day, will give them a framework for believing that their God loves them – even more than we do – with a fierce, peerless passion. Maybe playing the long-game means that we remember that the repercussions of choosing sacrificial love every day, will echo into eternity in ways we can’t comprehend yet on this side of the veil. And believing that means everything to me.
So take heart, Mamas! Your courage carves out pathway, however small, to the beauty of God, and it will not go unseen. There’s a quote I love from George Eliot written in her novel, “Middlemarch.” Though I hope I won’t rest in an unvisited tomb, her character’s sentiment is powerful:
She says,
“That things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Your faithfulness to your children preserves the very fabric of humanity, so that someday, united together, we will all dwell in the presence of our beloved God.