Hey Mama, Here’s the Secret for Getting Through the Hard Days

You need to know something.

Just because I write about home and family, marriage, and the joys and gloriousness of motherhood, doesn’t mean I spend all my days with a throng of happy, smiling children around me, basking in their sweet revelries, reflecting on how easy parenting is.

Some days, if you could peek into my home, you’d find me on the floor in my bedroom, tear-stained face, heart aching, attempting a prayer that will only come out as a desperate, “God, please help me.”

Since the Fall, we’ve been in trouble. (“In this life, you will have trouble…” John 16:33) It helps me to know that even though it feels so rotten, difficulty is a normal part of every life and Jesus predicted it, so part of getting past it is to embrace its reality, nod, and refuse to give it more power by gasping at its unexpectedness.

Parenting is where I find the most chiseling of life’s trouble. But it’s also where I know the Lord wants to mold me. So many times I get caught up in wanting someone else to change, when He whispers, “It’s really more about you right now.” How painful that is.

When I get in that desperate place, I know what I am to do.

I am to let go.

See, conflict in relationships comes from one thing:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.” James 4:1-3

I want things from my children. I want them to do the right thing, be the right thing, embrace the right thing. And while none of us is murdering, literally, how many times do we “kill” with our tongues, in an effort to force or manipulate people into doing what we want them to do?

The things that I want for my children aren’t bad. They’re very good, in fact. But it’s how I seek to get them.

Do you see the last line in that verse? “…because you do not ask.”

The Answer

What God wants from me when He gets me to that bent-knee, teary-eyed place, is for me to open my hands, my arms, and give my children to Him, and stop trying to control the situation or make them into what I want. That’s not what they need. They need to be made into what HE wants. And only He can do that.

Dear mama, you are there too. You are crying over a child, a husband, a sister, a friend–you have trouble because we all do.

What He wants from you is to give it to Him. Really, truly. Oh I know how hard it is. So easy to say, so seemingly impossible to do. But as many times as we have to, we must run and lay it at His feet. Again.

Give your cares to Him. He DOES care for you! He is so much better at fixing our trouble than we are.

Exhale, dear sister, into His arms.