Are you familiar with the book What to Expect When You are Expecting? You know, the bible for expectant mothers? It’s the book that tells you everything to expect to happen to your body and to your baby as he or she grows in the womb and then what to expect during delivery. Like many moms to be, I read that book cover to cover. Of course, I sort of glossed over all the complications that can happen and assumed I would just have a normal pregnancy and delivery. After all, those rare complications happen to other people, right?
A few years ago, there was a fictional movie, a comedy based on the book that followed multiple mothers who were expecting a baby, including one through adoption. There’s a scene where one of the women arrives at the hospital in labor and the doctor tells her she needs to have a c-section. She responds: “But I have a plan. It’s typed and everything.”
I can totally relate to this. I had a plan, not only a birth plan, but a motherhood plan. A plan for what I expected motherhood to be like. It looked like something from one of those sweet baby shampoo commercials where everyone looks like they are drowning in pure baby bliss.
And while there are certainly times of bliss, as we know, motherhood isn’t easy and it doesn’t always turn out how we expect. Whether in small things, like our child throwing up in the car on the way to a play date with friends, or in big things like learning our child has a serious illness or disability— what we expect to happen in motherhood often clashes head on with life in a fallen world. As a result, our children don’t always do what we expect. Their life circumstances aren’t always what we expected they would be. And as moms, we aren’t always the moms we expected and hoped we’d be.
Yet while our expectations for motherhood may fail us, we can always expect great things from our Savior. In every moment of motherhood, we can expect Christ to be for us what we can’t be for ourselves.
Four Things Moms Can Expect From Christ:
1. Forgiveness of sins: The apostle John wrote that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Because of the fall of man, we can expect to sin, but through our redemption from sin in Christ, we can expect forgiveness from sin. We are clothed in Christ’s righteousness so that God looks at us and sees all that Christ did in his perfect life on our behalf. We are forgiven for every sin, past, present, and future because God expended his wrath for our sin on Christ at the cross. We are set free from sin and can now live for God and his glory. This is good news moms need!
So, when you find yourself frustrated with your children and you say things you wish you hadn’t said, because of Jesus, you can turn to the gospel and appropriate what he did for you. You can pray and seek the Lord’s forgiveness. You can rest in the truth that the Spirit is making you new each day. You can apologize to your children and model what it looks like to live out the truths of the gospel.
2. Grace in every moment: The Apostle John also wrote that God gives us grace upon grace (John 1:16). We can expect grace for all we need. Grace is God’s favor set on us. It’s his kindness that we don’t deserve. We come to faith by God’s grace (Ephesians 2:8). But God’s grace goes further: By his grace, he gives us all that we need to live out the calling he’s given to us. Peter tells us that “his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). We can trust God’s grace to keep and sustain us. He will ensure we finish the race.
When we are overwhelmed in our mothering, when we don’t know what to do, when we feel inadequate or insufficient, we can trust in God’s grace to carry us. We can pray and ask for his grace to sustain us, to give us wisdom, to help us put off sin and put on righteousness. Moms, rejoice in this: God’s grace is abundant; it’s a well that never runs dry.
3. His Spirit to be at work in us: One of my favorite passages is in Romans 8 where Paul tells us that when we don’t have the words to know how to pray, the Spirit prays for us on our behalf (Romans 8:26). Because some days, life gets hard and it seems like I can hardly breath, much less put my thoughts into words. On those days, I know the Holy Spirit is speaking for me. Moms, the Spirit is always at work in us and for us, even when we don’t realize it. In our most chaotic and troubling days, the Spirit is actively at work, making us more and more like Christ.
When we are impatient in our mothering, when we find ourselves saying things to our children we regret, when we fail to be the moms we desire to be, we can rejoice in the truth that the Spirit never ceases his work in us. Each day he is teaching us, training us, convicting us, and changing us. He is giving us opportunities to see our need for Christ, to repent of sin, and to rest in Christ’s finished work. So while there are days we may not be the moms we want to be, we can trust that the Spirit is transforming us into the moms Christ died for us to be.
4. His presence with us : We live in a fallen world where life does not go as we expect. But we are not alone. We can expect God to be present with us no matter what we are going through. As Paul wrote in Romans 8: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38). Nothing can separate us from him.
We can turn to him and cry out for his strength. We can know that he hears all our cries. We can seek his help and wisdom in difficult circumstances. We can trust that he knows all that is happening in our lives and in the lives of our children and that he is working in the situation for our good. We can trust that he will never leave us or forsake us. We are his and he is ours.
While motherhood is filled with unexpected twists and turns, challenges and heartaches, we can expect good things from our good God. Moms, let the gospel anchor your heart and give you hope in the face of the unmet and failed expectations of motherhood.
