A Plea to Young Mothers

For the first time in seven-and-a-half years it seems as though it is possible to complete some things. That count goes back to four months after we moved across the country to some raw land and little Annabelle was born. Ever since then, I’ve recently realized, I have not been but a nose-breadth above water at any given moment. So many spinning plates = so many broken dishes.

Concerning the possibility of getting things done: I have older children! I know you all have known this for quite some time but I don’t adapt quickly, apparently. I have lived in the space of having only small children far beyond what was the reality but recently I am realizing it’s not all toddlers over here anymore. They have chore lists and they can function without me – perhaps even thrive – from time to time and most days we can get all of the dishes done if we all take a crack at it.

My oldest son is surpassing me in height (and other things, let’s be honest). My older daughters can wash dishes, cook lunch, and scrub the floor mostly unsupervised. Our second oldest son is educating me about weather and gardening and now eviscerates chickens better than I ever have. My babies are still my babies but Joshie, on a walk down our dirt road just last night declared that “God knows what’s good for us… and He cares for us and protects us…”, so I have much to learn from him as well.

And so I can do a little extra cleaning or a bit more organizing or focus more on homeschool and do a bit of gardening and writing without feeling as though we are doing everything and nothing all at once.

I’ve often thought of what I might tell myself if I could whisper six years back to my thirty-year-old self. Perhaps I will say it here instead…

Be encouraged, mothers of only very little ones. You will be neck – sometimes nose – deep for years. Bring them alongside you as you work so they can learn. I know what it feels like to wonder if all of this slowing down of chores so you can teach them as you go will ever bring forth fruit. It will be slow and messy and let me tell you about the laundry pile and the broken dishes and the tearful days…

But one day you’ll wake up and they won’t all be dependent upon you for everything. And one day you’ll find them capable of more than you ever remember teaching them. And one day they’ll really start to grow up and you’ll know that a childhood is not so much made up of the big days and fantastic moments as it is the sum of thousands upon thousands of seemingly mundane moments, as many as you are willing to share with them.

And somewhere in between the massive piles of dirty laundry and the chicken bone that’s been under the table since yesterday’s lunch, you’ll realize that none of the mess really matters anyway.

And you’ll tell every Mama on the internet who will listen that these tiny people whose diapers you change, whose messes you wipe up, whose cheeks you kiss are not just there for your enjoyment. Yes, they are sweet, squishy little gifts to love on but, more than that, they are living, eternal souls entrusted to your stewardship by God himself.

I have long feared that we mothers, lost in the sleepless nights, the dirty diapers, and the endless mess, easily underestimate the evangelical work we are called, nay commanded, to in our own home. I know I have.

They are never too young, even in diapers, to hear the Word of God, to bow their heads in prayer, to have parents fervently praying for their souls. They are never too young to know the depths of their sin, the heights of God’s holiness, or to be told of the goodness of His love in Christ Jesus.

If you don’t believe me, please listen to the words of Charles Spurgeon:

“Talk not of a child’s incapacity for repentance! I have known a child weep herself to sleep by the month together under a crushing sense of sin. If you would know a deep, and bitter, and awful fear of the wrath of God, let me tell you what I felt as a boy. If you would know joy in the Lord, many a child has been as full of it as his little heart could hold. If you want to know what faith in Jesus is, you must not look to those who have been bemuddled by the heretical jargon of the times, but to the dear children who have taken Jesus at His word, and believed in Him, and loved Him, and therefore know and are sure that they are saved.

Capacity for believing lies more in the child than in the man. We grow less rather than more capable of faith: every year brings the unregenerate mind further away from God, and makes it less capable of receiving the things of God. No ground is more prepared for the good seed than that which as yet has not been trodden down as the highway, nor has been as yet overgrown with thorns. Not yet has the child learned the deceits of pride, the falsehood of ambition, the delusions of worldliness, the tricks of trade, the sophistries of philosophy; and so far it has an advantage over the adult. In any case the new birth is the work of the Holy Ghost, and He can as easily work upon youth as upon age.”

Do we realize how few moments there are left to instruct, train, and pray? Do we count the days between now and adulthood and realize how fleeting that time is? Do we love their souls more than we love the many temporal blessings of being a parent?

I am often reminded that my children are far more likely to stumble over me – my compromise, my hypocrisy, my bad example – than anyone beyond these walls that we inhabit. This is a sobering thought.

I often wonder if I was told this as a young mother. I suspect I was and that I didn’t soberly consider the implications of the days that turn to years that will flash in an instant straight into eternity. I suspect I figured that they were too young then, toddlers though they were, to really get much out of a daily reading of The Scriptures or to benefit from daily intercession for their souls.

There are many regrets in my life that still grieve me to this day but this one, in particular, is possibly the sharpest.

I would yell it from the rooftops, to any mother who would listen: Your ministry is staring back at you in faces you’ve known all their lives.

I beg of you to guard their hearts from the world and the flesh… to make your home a haven from all things that would corrupt their souls… to lay aside all else for a time of reading to them from The Word of God every day… to plead for their souls before the Throne of Grace, as infants even. I have often wondered if perhaps those many sleepless hours of feeding newborns are given us as a gift for just that purpose

I don’t know much, but I do know that you won’t regret it… but that you may, like me, weep bitter tears of regret if you believe there is time enough later on.

This was something I was convicted of years ago and I thank the Lord for His showing it to me when our babes were still quite young and what mercy He shows, even when we are so negligent! I continue to fail at this, and know that I always will, but what joy and peace there are in knowing the path of duty and in knowing that His grace is all that can sustain a duty such as this, for apart from Him we can do nothing.

I will leave off this plea with another word from Mr. Spurgeon:

“Fathers and mothers are the most natural agents for God to use in the salvation of their children. I am sure that, in my early youth, no teaching ever made such an impression upon my mind as the instruction of my mother; neither can I conceive that, to any child, there can be one who will have such influence over the heart as the mother who has so tenderly cared for her offspring. A man with a soul so dead as not to be moved by the sacred name of “mother” is creation’s blot. Never could it be possible for any man to estimate what he owes to a godly mother.

Certainly I have not the powers of speech with which to set forth my valuation of the choice blessing which the Lord bestowed on me in making me the son of one who prayed for me, and prayed with me. How can I ever forget her tearful eye when she warned me to escape from the wrath to come? I thought her lips right eloquent; others might not think so, but they certainly were eloquent to me.

How can I ever forget when she bowed her knee, and with her arms about my neck, prayed, “Oh, that my son might live before Thee!” Nor can her frown be effaced from my memory,—that solemn, loving frown, when she rebuked my budding iniquities; and her smiles have never faded from my recollection,—the beaming of her countenance when she rejoiced to see some good thing in me towards the Lord God of Israel.”

May God help us to see our children in light of eternity.