My dad used to say that there was nothing as difficult as parenting. I happen to think marriage is the hardest thing, but these days, parenting is the thing that purifies me. It is the beautiful benefit of hard mothering.
I don’t write about parenting or mothering so very much because I am too much in it to really offer wisdom. Perhaps, I could give a few tips to those who are following after me – moms of toddlers and preschoolers and babies, but it feels much too fresh to me to offer real wisdom or advice even after nine and a half years.
Right now, mothering is the refiner’s fire that is removing the dross from my soul. It seems that I have a lot of dross. Some days are golden, yet some days I feel I will never make it to the next. Overall, this season is a hard season – a trial of sorts, and yet my trial feels small in comparison to all the things others experience. But it is my trial, and comparison is a thing that cannot be done. Maybe a trial is not so much defined by how large or small the thing is that you are experiencing, but by how much it rips your heart and causes you to submit over and over again to the Father’s goodness, when life doesn’t feel all that good.
Some days life doesn’t feel all that good. Those languishing days are the days that I see the dross heavy in me. The Father is melting me over and over again, and the dark parts of my heart are revealed in my reactions to parenting and marriage. Some days it doesn’t feel like any great work is being done in me, except the revealing of these dark areas – these areas that ooze anything but the Father’s love. Sometimes, I am tempted to feel hopeless. Sometimes I feel alone. But as the dross is revealed, the Father melts and burns it away, and with less dross, hope rises as my faith is purified and made genuine.
The dross and the melting are making me lean into the Father more. Sometimes I simply learn that I don’t acknowledge His presence and goodness near enough. I don’t want of Him near enough. I don’t love so well or so much. But He hasn’t stopped loving me, even when I’ve thought about giving up. I get a taste of His living water and manna falls and fills my soul with the richness only Heaven gives.
Leaning into God and walking in absolute surrender and trust is so very hard. Especially when trusting equals trials. I know that during this season He is calling me to remain. To stay in the fire. To be refined. To love like He loves. And as I do, with every impurity that is made pure, with every sin that lives in my heart that comes out and is accounted for, I am becoming like Him. I know that according to His word, trials bring perseverance, perseverance produces maturity and wholeness, and wholeness is a lack of no good thing. So trials, though hard and not fun are worth it in the long haul, bringing my heart more in unity with His.
I want unity with God. It stays me so that I remain when some days I want to run. I want to run because I want a new life – a life without pain. I think I want a life without trials and difficult people to care for – I want, sometimes, a selfish life. The Father keeps wooing me even as I contemplate another lover instead. I return for my heated baptism of fire. As I am plunged into the depths, I feel it. My cicada skin is ripping away. My weary shell of a life I’ve tried to build on my own is falling to the ground. I am reborn and made new. This is indeed an absolute benefit of hard mothering – new life, purification, and unity with the Father’s heart. Perhaps in these trials I will also learn true love and how to live it and give it to others, starting with me, my husband, and my kids. What treasure indeed He is giving me.
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