August 11, 2017 - He always calls us to something

Her blue eyes had always penetrated my heart. Anytime she was in trouble, she simply has to flash those blue eyes at me and I would crumble under their stare. Seems like just yesterday she was 3 and we were cleaning up play dough out of the carpet. They say the bond of mother and child is incomparable and looking into those eyes I knew there was no other I loved the same.  Her hand felt like porcelain in mine as we walked down the hallway, the weight of our discussion still heavy in the air. “Mom, do you think I made the right decision?” There it was, the elephant of the parent/child relationship.  She always needed my approval as her mom. She craved it as much as the yellow daisies out on my front stoop needed the afternoon sun. And I needed to know I had raised her in a way that she could make the right the decision. Isn’t that why God placed her in my womb? The weight of that was the ton of bricks I carried with me from the day I heard her heartbeat. This blue-eyed miracle had been my mission field. My chance to breathe Christ into the child God placed in my care. Who else would be better positioned to model everything God created us to be to this human being? Every morning I woke praying for her bouncing head of blond curls to go out into the world signifying everything God created her to be, not because of who I am to her, but in spite of who I am to her. Because I mess her up every single day with my humanity.  But I loved her, and I prayed for her, and I mothered her. And I did my best to be what God designed me to be – an example of living grace to those around me and his mission field to my daughter.

Except I didn’t. Because I am not a mom.

I’m acutely aware of that every day. Not because I feel that I need to be, but because almost all of you are. And more of you with each passing day. I feel it in what I read. What I watch. Where I go. In the words forming your sentences. It’s more obvious the further I move from here to there because as time passes the more I am not a mom.

I’ve been thinking about this more the last couple of months, not for the reasons you might expect, but because I have been focusing more on what I am instead of what I am not. Had I been a mother (or father), there would be this life-long need/desire/responsibility/longing/urgency/insatiable acute awareness that there was this being under my responsibility in whom I needed to make a contributing member of society. And as a Christian, a contributing member to the Christ’s society. Isn’t it what you all want as parents? For your kids to make good decisions? For them to succeed? For them to be lovable and to love in return? (Each of these definable by the person doing the defining.) I was recently talking with a friend of mine who was expecting and we were discussing the upcoming delivery. I asked her what she was most nervous about. This is what she said. She was most nervous about her responsibility in modeling life for a child and for the rest of her life.

It got me thinking (not for the first time; I’d already been pondering these specifics), about what my role is in this life. Unlike a majority of the women reading this screen, God didn’t call me to mother-hood. I didn’t hear a heartbeat on a monitor. I’m not experiencing one of the most incredible bonds of life. I’m not seeing those blue eyes looking up at me. I’m not caressing that porcelain hand in mine as we walk down the hallway. I don’t hear her asking the tough questions of advice.  I don’t send her out into the world wondering if I did enough.  I don’t second guess my decisions in how I am parenting every night when I climb into bed. I’m not doing all of the ups and downs of raising up another that you do on every single day.

But actually I do.  I may not be a mother, but God did in fact call me to something similar (though very different, so mothers don’t throw anything at me in frustration at that comparison).

The eyes are Chinese.

The hands are wrinkled.

The questions are about her husband.

The decisions are about advice given across the restaurant table.

Instead of tucking her into bed at night I send her back into her house hoping she’s ok.

God calls us to community. To intentional living where we invest in the people He places in our paths. You see, when you are not a mother, and even when you are a mother, are we not to see our interactions with those God places around us in somewhat of the same light? Should I not be just as equally invested in the walks of my friends and coworkers, and even strangers I am meeting for the first time, as I am in my family? Is not my responsibility to those around me equally as imperative as it would be to my children (a bit of an exaggeration, again don’t throw anything at me)? Whether they are 3 year old blessings given to us through parenthood or 30 and 70 years old friends God places in our journey, we are called to raise them up in the way they should go through investing, shepherding, and covering their lives in prayer. My “blue eyed daughter” right now might be a brown-eyed mother of one who needs someone to help her navigate depression, or a red-headed un-married women trying to understand rejection. Absolutely, as a mother you have been given the biggest blessing and responsibility. Pray, model, and love your child through life, as you give them back over to God for Him to do His (not your) will. Likewise, as a non-mom (or a mom) equally pray, model, and love your friends, coworkers and anyone else God places in your path through life. That’s what God created us for. Dive in and invest. Make a difference. Live mission-ally and committed to someone outside yourself. Are you doing that? Do you have people in your life that you are “raising up”? Do you have “blue eyes” that respect you enough to ask “do you think I made the right decision”? 

God may not always call us in the way that we think he will, but he always calls us to something. And he always calls us inside the life-stage where we are.  As I'm in what they call mid-life, I'm becoming more acutely aware of the question of am I doing what God called me to do in this life? He didn't call me to motherhood, so what did he call me to?  I believe that He calls us all, mothers or not, to investing more in others than we do ourselves. One vision of that is raising our children. One vision of that is raising the people around us.

Are you in mid-life wondering if you are missing the mark? Are you in a life stage thinking God left you out? Are you so focused on where you are "not" that you are totally missing out on your "I am"? Are you forgetting to focus on the raising up the lives God placed around you? God strategically placed you, as you are, for this very moment.

She said she had the fear of the responsibility that comes with raising her unborn child. If we are doing it right, we have the same human driven fear in the responsibility with friendship. At the end of my life, I need to know one life saw the grace of God and was made more meaningful simply because of the existence of me. It’s got me thinking. 



You can access previous posts HERE.