Mother’s Day Tonic

Posted by deangonzales on May 8, 2010
2 Comments

Meet Diana. By age 24, this slender, bright, and beautiful young woman was a newlywed with a BA in Speech Communication and a BS in Education. She loved her husband and the prospects of wifehood and motherhood. At the age of 25, Diana gave birth to a son. About two years later, she birthed a second son. At first the novelties of motherhood and homemaking were quite exhilarating. She felt blessed of the Lord to be living her fondest dreams.

He raises the poor from the dust, and lift s the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of His people. He makes the barren woman abide in the house as a joyful mother of children. Praise the Lord (Psalm 113:7-9).

But soon the exhilaration wore off . Every morning, she faced dirty diapers, runny noses, food messes, temper tantrums, discipline problems, clothing piles, and kitchen clutter. Another son was born. Claustrophobic with cabin fever and boredom doldrums, she sighed, “Any twelve-year-old could wash these dishes, wipe these fannies, mop that floor, and pour these Cheerios onto this high chair tray.”

Her mind often drifted back to her high school and college years. “Back then, I was the center of my world. I decided what I wanted to do for myself. My decisions were based on what would please and broaden me. People applauded me on the stage, commended me for my well-delivered speeches, and discussed with me my future goals and aspirations in life. I enjoyed expressing my creativity in the classroom, discussing profound literary themes with my students, and checking off my responsibilities on each day’s challenging to-do list.

“But it’s not about me anymore. Now, I watch my husband every morning escape out into the wild blue yonder where he meets exciting people, he goes out for lunch, and he checks off challenging tasks, and he enhances his career and his potential. Then he returns home to this less-than-immaculate house and is puzzled about what I did all day, why dinner’s not ready yet, and why I don’t make a fuss about his return.

“Though I’ve given up everything for my husband and my children, I get no applause or atta-boys. I’ve lost center-stage preeminence and become a back-stage nobody.”

Her years in the feminism-infested current had given her glamorous dreams of personal glory. And now those dreams were dashed. Diana was downcast and heavy. She felt trapped. This was her lot for the rest of her life. She was grieving the death of her youthful dreams. “I basically spiraled down into a depression. I resented my husband’s success and my children’s thanklessness. I questioned if all of this self denial was really necessary. It just seemed as if it was asking too much of me.

“Theoretically and theologically, I held to the biblical role of selfless wifehood and motherhood. But internally and emotionally there was deep-seated resistance in my heart. Feminism was like fluoride in the water of my youth, and now I was feeling its poison in my soul. Why must I give up my life to make my husband and his children look good? What about my aspirations, my abilities, my yearnings for influence and significance? What am I, chopped liver? Have I become my husband’s medieval slave? I want to be somebody. I want to be recognized. I want to be applauded too.”

Years later, Diana, who now has five children, admits, “I was in mild rebellion against God. And I stayed there for a while, until I saw those wants for what they really are—the display of my idolatrous, selfish, sinful pride. It was only when I took those deep personal longings and put them on the altar of consecration to God that I began to make spiritual headway.”

Meditations on her Savior burned away her rebellion and brought peace to her soul. In the garden of Gethsemane, the Lord Jesus looked into the appalling cup of self-sacrifice that His Father had poured for Him. He staggered at the thought of drinking it down to its last painful dregs. Instead of resentfully protesting, “What am I, chopped liver?” He submitted saying, “Father, if Thou art willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Thine be done” (Luke 22:42).

It’s my understanding that every biblically committed wife and mother must pass through a personal Gethsemane of sorts, needing to come to grips with the cup her Father has poured for her.

Think, dear sister, how the Lord Jesus selflessly served you. He laid down His life to make you look good. He laid it down on crucifixion day, so that you’d look good on judgment day. He was spat upon, beaten, scourged, mocked, stripped, spiked, hung, and forsaken. Then He breathed His last so that you wouldn’t forever weep, wail, and gnash your teeth in hell. He was born, lived, and died with the sole object that you would look good forever. Could it be that this wifehood and motherhood thing is calling you to higher ground, conforming you more to His glorious image?

My own wife shared with me an illustration that has helped her. It came from the movie Chariots of Fire. The British Olympic sprinter, Eric Liddell, was strolling on the Scottish Highlands, explaining to his sister the reason why he ran: “I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. And when I run I feel his pleasure.”

The thought of God’s face smiling at him drove him down the track. My bride confided: “The Lord made me for His purpose, too. He made me a woman, a wife, and a mother. He made me to serve. And when I serve, I feel His pleasure. And regardless of society’s face, my child’s face, or even my husband’s face, it’s my Heavenly Father’s face that drives me on. I know that when He sees me serving, He smiles and says, ‘This is my beloved daughter in whom I am well pleased.’ When I serve, I feel His pleasure.”

(An excerpt from Pastor Chanski’s recently published book Womanly Dominion: More Than a Gentle and Quiet Spirit)

Mark Chanski
Pastor, Reformed Baptist Church of Holland, MI
Adjunct Professor, Reformed Baptist Seminary, SC

Who Needs A Stay-At-Home Mom?

Posted by deangonzales on May 5, 2009
2 Comments

He makes the barren woman abide in the house As a joyful mother of children. Praise the LORD! (Psalm 113:9)

The mother is the hub of the home, holding all the spokes in place.  Without her being at her post, the family spins out of control and falls apart.  When her husband hears the predawn alarm clock, she knows he’s emotionally emboldened by her tenderly squeezing his arm in appreciation.

From then on, she’s the nucleus of the day’s family activity.  She needs to nurse feed one, rouse out of bed another, review a spelling list with yet another, change a diaper, prepare a breakfast, pray God’s blessing on the day, tie shoes, write out a check for a class trip, pack a lunch, check on progress regarding an upcoming book report, read and comment on a verse from Proverbs, discuss a peer conflict while chauffeuring to school, pick up Dad’s suit at the dry cleaners, shop for groceries and household items at the store, sign up for soccer at the Recreational Department, read a story before putting one down for a nap, teach one phonics sounds and letters, make beds and clean up the kitchen, show how to sweep properly, search the internet for good pictures of frogs, deal with a lying problem by spanking, talking, and praying, and prepare lunch.

That’s just the morning.

Then in the afternoon, she’s called to teach lyrics of a song about a pirate named Patch, take a field trip to the park down the street, talk about sharing apple slices with others, explain to her child why he’s not permitted to throw tantrums like others in the park, catch and analyze a grasshopper’s physiological structure and functions, return home for a naptime preceded by a storybook, sit down for personal devotions and prayer, call an appliance repairman about a strange-sounding washing machine, drive to school and talk with a teacher about a child’s performance in math class, talk about the day on the drive home, purchase a well-fitting pair of soccer cleats, assign and supervise the weeding of the flower garden, give out popsicles to the handful of neighborhood children playing in the yard, prepare dinner, embrace her husband and briefly share mutual experiences of the day, enjoy a nutritional supper and discussion together as a family, sit and listen to her husband lead in family worship, direct the clean-up after dinner, help with math homework, bake a batch of sweet-smelling chocolate chip cookies, wash bodies in the bathtub while singing about a pirate and a Savior, rock a little one in a chair, rub a back in bed while giving advice about an argument that took place during recess, pay bills on the internet, wash, fold, and iron shirts, counsel her husband about a relational conflict at work, and enjoy her husband rubbing her arm in bed.

With this, I’ve just skimmed the surface of her day.  Remove the hub of her tireless labors, and her family flies apart, her husband is a frazzled wreck, and her children are greatly diminished individuals.

“Oh,” but one might say, “This is the case only with mothers of young children.  When they’re older and all off to school, the mother’s role in the home is no longer all that crucial.”  Such a notion is sorely mistaken.  I contend that a mother’s most intense and demanding efforts are required during the teen years.  Frog and grasshopper preoccupations have graduated into boy and girl infatuations.  Rocking a little one in a chair early in the night has advanced to counseling a big one in the master bedroom well past midnight.

During the summer of 2006, we had everybody home for the last time.  Twenty-two-year-old Jared was home from architectural school and working for a design firm.  Twenty-year-old Calvin was doing an internship with a local brokerage firm and working a second job in the evenings.  Eighteen-year-old Austin was working almost full time delivering truck tires.  Fourteen-year-old Abigail and twelve-year-old Nathan were busy with swarming summer activities.  An ignorant onlooker might have suggested, “Surely there’s no need here for a stay-at-home mother.”  Oh so wrong!

These were my bride, Dianne’s, most demanding hours, as each child was passing through a crucial season of life involving a new girlfriend, or a complicated situation with an old girlfriend, or a vocational selection crisis, or an academic preparation issue, or a health problem like a broken leg and an emergency appendectomy with its related recovery time, or a peculiar spiritual/emotional trial.  Dianne would make sure to rise early in the morning in order to be in the kitchen when each one ate breakfast and gathered their things to head out into the world.  She’d ask them questions about where they were last night and with whom, and to whom they talked on their cell phones, and what their plans were during the day, all the while taking their spiritual pulses and administering words of wisdom in season.

She’d inform me of the development of each, seeking my counsel.  Then, she’d often have follow-up contact with them during lunch, or later in the afternoon when they’d return from work and be off to some other social or work activity.  She was a maternal air traffic controller, directing and nurturing the lives of her offspring who were now making crucial decisions that would determine the courses of the rest of their lives.  Both the stakes and the stress levels were higher than they’d ever been.

She would talk to me in the evenings.  I’d follow up sometimes with long late-night walks and talks with them about themes on which I’d been briefed by my helpmeet informant.  Without her maternal perceptions and observations, I’d have been clueless.  With them, our parenting labors were on the stretch as never before.   Many nights, we cried out to God in prayer for their long-term prosperity.  It was my wife’s finest hour as a mother.

Mark Chanski, Reformed Baptist Church of Holland, MI
excerpt from Womanly Dominion; More than a Gentle and Quiet Spirit, pp. 110-112.

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