When motherhood fears collide with faith; God's plan for my babies outweighs my brokenness

Motherhood has been a more turbulent journey than I could ever have anticipated nine years ago when that first test flashed positive. It has been a joyful one for sure, but wow was I wrong when I thought that surviving adolescence and finding the right life partner was the most challenging my life would get!


As someone with a long and documented battle against chronic anxiety: the responsibilities of helping four little people navigate life successfully (knowing that my every word and action is helping to shape their worldview) weigh heavily on me. The immense task of guiding and caring for the precious lives with which I have been entrusted, is oftentimes overwhelming. 


I am so often tempted to despair when on yet another occasion I have failed to respond to one of my children with patience and love and instead have shown them a reaction of frustration and coldness. Each time I have failed to reflect our Heavenly Father's heart in my treatment of my little ones I feel the worry creep in. The paralysing weight of my inadequacies and brokenness feeds my anxiety that my personal fears and traumas will create lifelong woundedness in my little ones.


But then, out of the darkness; God's Holy Spirit whispers hope into my fragile mama heart:

“My plan for your babies is so much greater than the sum of your fears and failures …

keep giving them to me”. 


God so swiftly and so graciously reminds me that I've shifted my gaze from Him, to myself. Somewhere along the way, I've shouldered the entire responsibility for the hearts and lives of my little ones. Instead of praising the Father who formed them and looking to Him for His strength to carry them and His perfect power to give them a purposeful future - I instead measure the potential of their lives by the scale of my own inabilities. 

God put Proverbs 22.6 on my heart this morning: “Train up a child in the way he should go: And when he is old, he will not depart from it” (ESV Bible). I remembered hearing this scripture often as a child and my little heart thinking that it was to be read as: instill the rules, conditions and values necessary for children to grow into successful adults and they will be set for life. As a mother, I've come to realise just how flawed this interpretation is. God impressed upon me some years ago that Proverbs 22.6 is qualified by Deuteronomy 6.5-7: “...love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might … and these words that I command you today shall be on your heart; you shall teach them diligently to your children…” (ESV Bible).


To “train up a child” is nothing to do with restricting, regulating or dominating in the hope that a stern word and firm hand will ensure that a child stays on the right path. It is everything to do with every moment of every day, pointing our babies heavenward to the Father who created them and is powerful enough to carry them through any storm. Not one of my successes or strivings in this world will enable my children to live a peaceful and productive life: but the freedom that comes of little hearts that know they are loved by Father God and know how to love Him and how to call on Him in any trial - that will stay with them for life.


They will make mistakes and take wrong turns in this life to be sure, but if I turn my gaze away from my anxieties and fix my eyes on the rock that is higher than I; training up my children in what it is to love God and be loved by Him - I can give them a foundation for life. What will stay in their memory and speak volumes, more than the times that I tried to have it all together and failed will be the prayers whispered together in the dead of night after a nightmare, or the times I modelled to them putting my faith in Jesus Christ in the middle of an impossible situation.  


Holy Spirit diligently reminds me to intercede for my little ones, to teach them authoritative faith, and to model to them making bold declarations in the name of Jesus Christ. He reminds me to lift my eyes off of my fallen self and to look heavenward, because my God who formed these babies in the womb declares them to be children of the Most High and His plan for them amounts to infinitely more than the sum of my fears and failures. 

What has been your greatest motherhood fear that God met you and challenged you on? Comment below!