There’s one thing nobody told me about becoming a mom: that certain things would bother me a whole lot less than they used to. Talk to any new parent and it wouldn’t be unusual to hear them discussing the color and consistency of poop, or any other number of topics not considered polite dinner conversation. There’s something in our brains that just changes, and I do believe God wired it this way on purpose. After all, how would anything get done if no one was willing to be in the same room as a smelly, screaming baby?
All joking aside, however, it never occurred to me just how much my priorities would shift in such a short span of time. Prior to motherhood, and even prior to marriage or finishing school, I was determined to change the world. I knew God had a purpose for my life, and I knew He would work in big ways. I was certain of my future, at least the near future, and all the training I’d had up to that point would perfectly align with where I was going. I knew there would be obstacles, but my vision would keep me going. Then, I started a career and realized just like all young idealists that the real world has much bigger problems than I anticipated. I realized that dreams are hard to live off, and making a difference–forget about it. It was at this time that I realized that my idea of changing the world was a pipe dream at best.
Because what I failed to take into account was just how broken the world is. I entered adulthood with the notion that I was to be the savior of everything. But only the true Savior can fix this mess. It wasn’t until my whole world had broken down that I finally turned my eyes upward to find God holding out His hands and revealing my next few steps. They led towards a newborn being thrust into my arms and me wondering at what changed.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have kids: I always wanted a family. But I didn’t see how it fit alongside all the other plans I had laid which involved the whole changing-the-world business. I was so afraid of giving up my identity, my career, my freedom. I bought into the lies that told me having and raising a baby is the end of the line. I used to believe that I was wasting my gifts and education to stay home with children, and that everything I worked for up to that point was over. I wasn’t listening to the other voice telling me to reconsider that this could actually be the plan for me. Even though I had plenty of godly women in my upbringing who put their time and talents into raising families (including my own mother), Satan is persistent and sly. He was able to infiltrate my own life, and he almost drowned out the quiet whisper beckoning me to step out in faith.
Once God opened my eyes, I saw how the freedom I was seeking through a career was no freedom at all. True freedom is found only in submission to Christ, and it is a greater freedom than anything else this world has to offer. The first step is letting go of who we are so that God can work. My identity was so wrapped up in what I did and who I wanted to be that I missed the part about my true identity: as a child of God.
I was trying to live by my own plan, not by God’s plan. And it wasn’t until He had stripped away every last layer of who I thought I was that He could begin creating me afresh. I don’t mean to suggest that I’ve somehow arrived. I’m still learning every day what it means to be, first and foremost, a daughter of Christ. Each day there are new challenges that pull me to rely more on God. Sometimes I still long for the plans I’d laid. Sometimes I wish that the idealism I once had was still there. But I can’t live in a dream. Time is too short to ignore the task in front of us. And for the moment, I know what my job is.
It’s not always glamorous, I’ll admit. Often I find myself dragging my feet to do the next thing because I just don’t want to do it. Submission to another’s will is hard. But learning how to submit to Christ is what I and every other believer are called to do. If we can’t do that, then we will be stuck chained to whatever lies are promising to fulfill us. I’ve tried both, and I can say with confidence that I would always choose the path I’m now walking.
I haven’t lost all of my idealism. It’s just a little more grounded. Because I know now that sometimes changing the world looks a lot less like Hollywood and a lot more like wiping runny noses and scraping cereal off a high chair. Though I may have gone through years of training for what I once thought would be higher things, I also now see that there’s no greater purpose towards which I could use it.