By Jenn Riegel
I love how the Lord’s truths can apply to so many people in so many different ways, regardless of circumstances, age, location, and any other number of qualifications we often define ourselves by. If you are a regular reader of Completely Devoted, I hope what I share here speaks to you deeply, children or no children.
When I was pregnant with my first child, about 6 years ago, I received some of the best, most straight-to-the heart advice from a dear friend, and I’ve shared it with every expecting friend since: being a mother is the most selfless thing you’ll ever do.
I knew it was true when she said it. It was one of those moments when your heart feels cut, but instead of feeling wounded you sense relief, release. There was no badge-earning legalism in her words, just the timber of wisdom gained from legitimate experience, and a hint of foreboding caution.
Over the last six years my own experience has given me ample opportunity to learn that the selflessness of motherhood is not an impossible high jump, but the lowest rung in limbo – the lower you go (the more selfless you become), the closer you are to succeeding. My daughter is a highly sensitive child. She processes everything around her, from the sound and busyness of a room to the emotion of others, on a greater level than most. In fact, on the night she was born she was turning to look in the direction of sounds she heard. At 5 years old she is reading on at least a 5th grade level. She’s incredible, and she’s also been incredibly difficult to live with. Not only is she aware of a great deal of nuances most people don’t notice, she also internalizes it all in a very personal way, and responds similarly. As first-time parents, this was not the child we were expecting. I think every parent imagines a happy baby who interacts, plays, explores…and of course, sleeps. Not this girl. She clung, and cried, and clung, and cried. We later would realize that because of her high sensitivity she was very overwhelmed by the world around her. But in those first few years, we were just exhausted.
And angry. Why did God give us this child? How could He? There was never a break. Everywhere we went, she went. And if she couldn’t go, we didn’t. I stopped counting the number of people who told me to just let her cry. I usually didn’t get the chance to tell them she cries all day long, and I hold her because if I have to hear her cry any more… Well, it just wouldn’t be good.
You can imagine with a child like this, not much else gets done in those early years. My poor husband would come home from work and find me in a near zombie state with nothing done around the house and he’d say “But, what did you do all day?” And looking back, I honestly don’t remember a whole lot from those first few years of her life.
But there is one day that will forever be burned in my heart, in the best way. I was cleaning the oven (a dreaded task, and to be totally honest I was only wiping down the front glass!). I was tired, resentful (though I can’t even remember why now), griping under my breath to no one but myself. The Holy Spirit’s voice came in my mind swiftly, clearly, gently. “Lay your burden down,” He said in the sweetest voice that cut through my miserable mumblings, like a knife made of ice that makes a sharp, clean cut and melts to clean and soothe the wound.
But it seemed totally out of nowhere, as His voice sometimes does. I thought “Well that’s weird. What does that even mean?” I started considering all that was burdensome me. Too easily came my laundry list: my husband with all his expectations, my small house that I can never seem to keep clean, my…*child*…. With great superiority of mind I “laid down” each burden as I thought of them. When I finally paused, the Lord was silent.
Then so quietly, and with great hurt, He asked “Are the things I’ve given you to bless you, really burdens to you?” I felt like the air was sucked out of the room.
Then He said again just as clearly and gently: “Lay your burden down.” Now with a clearer head I realized what I’d missed before. “Burden,” singular. Me.
I am my burden. Lay myself down. Give it up. Let go.
He showed me this same truth again in another way, just a day later. Ann Voskamp, author of the blog “A Holy Experience,” is an extremely gifted writer. Her post “What A Mother Must Sacrifice” was the very thing I needed to sear this truth on my heart. She was looking through a book of art with her children and came to a painting of ducks in a farm yard. Below the painting a caption read “Mother ducks pick feathers from their chests to line their nests.”
As she sat, mesmerized by the caption, she asked herself “How else did you think nests were lined?”
“With leftovers. With feathers discarded, the molted, the not-so-necessary feathers. I thought mother ducks picked feathers up from what was laying about, scraps, lining nests with what simply could be mustered after the fact.
But no. (Is that only the way of human mothers?) No, a mother duck plucks each feather out from the heart of her bosom, warm and soft. She lines the nest with bits of herself. The best of her, from the deep spots. She cups her young in her sacrifice.
…
“Night descends and calls children to dreams. I lead them to their bed-gate, arms and legs under quilts worn from the ride. I read stories, stroke hair, say prayers. Prayers to Him who plucked hard from His own heart.
A sacrifice, staggering and true, for love of His very own. We learn love from His laid down.”
With those last sentences I just wept. His sacrifice was so, so great, and done with the truest, deepest, unrelenting love. Seeing this truth, how could I not love my children and husband the same way?
I find, most often, the selflessness I need in my own motherhood comes easier when I stop trying to create an ideal self, the perfect wife and mother, devised by standards that I can measure others against and hang myself by. When let go, when I lay down my desires and pursuits to be anything more than what I am, I find that I am most able to be present and love well. His grace is sufficient for me, and what I am is His. And He is ever correcting, ever growing, ever loving me. And that’s enough. So I’ll co-operate with Him and just lay my burden down.
Jenn Riegel lives in Memphis, USA, with her husband of eight and a half years and their two kids. She works for Visible Music College, where she and her husband met as students nine years ago. She misses her hometown of Boulder, CO so much it hurts sometimes, and hopes to travel there and many other beautiful places with her wonderful family in the near future.
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