Finding Joy in Motherhood
If you are a mother, your job, career, and calling is motherhood. It doesn’t matter whether or not you like it or if it bores you, your life on this earth isn’t about doing what you want and liking it. It’s about believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and obeying Him. Therefore, you can choose to love and enjoy motherhood as God’s ordained calling on your life. You can learn to accept that godliness with contentment is great gain and you can live out motherhood heartily as unto the Lord.
Since women have so many choices today, it makes it easier to be discontent with God’s calling on our lives. Motherhood just doesn’t seem very glamorous but what job or career is truly glamorous? There are none! I remember reading about Carrie Underwood’s “glamorous” life traveling in a bus all around the country and away from her family. That doesn’t sound very glamorous to me!
If it’s fame and fortune a woman seeks over motherhood, we can label this pride since their life is only about themselves instead of what’s best for their children. If it’s so they can have more stuff than they actually need, we can label it greed since their life is not about doing what is right for their children’s spiritual lives.
Years ago, I read about Brother Lawrence and how he learned to find joy in peeling potatoes all day long. Learning to find joy and contentment in motherhood is attainable if women renew their mind with God’s will for them. God’s will is for them to raise their own children and find joy in it; for the joy of the Lord is their strength!
Yes, motherhood is hard and full of self-sacrifice but as my pastor taught: “Grace calls us to love. Love calls us to serve. Service calls us to sacrifice.” Loving your children is serving and sacrificing for them. In the end, there is a lot more joy and contentment one learns in serving and sacrificing for others instead of serving themselves. Motherhood is all about serving and sacrifice and this is what the Lord calls mothers to do. He did it for us. We can do it for Him!
Do your children know that you love motherhood? Do they know that you love being their mother? As you find joy in motherhood, you are teaching and training your daughters to find joy in motherhood, in the menial, in the every day messiness and sacrifice of life. This is what our Savior calls us to do and you can do it because He has given you His Holy Spirit that works mightily within you!
She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.
Proverbs 31:26, 27
19 thoughts on “Finding Joy in Motherhood”
So very grateful for this wonderful post!! I forwarded it to all of my daughters to remind them again just how much I Love being their mother. I’ve been blessed today! Thanks, Lori.
“Motherhood just doesn’t seem very glamorous but what job or career is truly glamorous? There are none!”
I always wonder about this. People make being at home seem boring and full of drudgery, vs. “a real job,” which is supposedly exciting. But every job I’ve ever had was sometimes boring and there was definitely tedium and drudgery involved. For most people, work just isn’t all that glamorous, it’s work.
Have you ever read “Domestic Tranquility,” by F. Carolyn Graglia? It’s from 1998 and is out of print, but you can find it used. Graglia left a career as a lawyer to be at home with her family. Of the idea that outside work is superior to staying home and “just” fulfilling the needs of others, she writes, “How can anyone familiar with the real world of demanding market production…ever believe a worker in the marketplace does anything *except* fulfill the needs of others? What did I do as a practicing attorney except fulfill my clients’ needs? They were surely not my own needs.” She also says, “I have always wondered if either Friedan or the psychiatrist she cited had any idea what it was like to read judicial decisions, draft interrogatories, write a prospectus, or draw up articles of incorporation. It’s a clean way to make a good living — better than mining coal — but it’s overrated as a way to make you ‘feel alive.'”
So it’s not the serving that feminists object to, since everyone with a job must serve someone, it’s the sacrifice you spoke of. It seems it’s no good doing for other people if you aren’t being paid or garnering status and prestige from strangers.
You’re welcome, Holly! My children clearly knew that I loved being their mother as well as motherhood. It’s all I ever wanted in life: to be a wife, mother, and full-time homemaker. For some reason, the feminist agenda never appealed to me, thankfully!
Great points, Liz, and if we’re going to serve someone, why not serve and sacrifice for our very own children! I will definitely check out the book you mentioned. Thank you!
I love this post. I get really sick of people claiming that we women who stay home instead of getting a “career” are bad for society. Or they accuse us of being brainwashed “fundies.” Oh, how I detest that word!
I recently left a particular blog because I got sick of the trolls and feminists making their nasty and rude comments because the wives have decided to live the life God has ordained for them by being keepers at home.
I used to allow trolls and feminists comment on my blog until women told me they were destructive and distracting to what I was teaching so I no longer allow them since they are usually up to no good any ways.
I ‘m glad you don’t allow those comments. This is a place for women to be encouraged in God’s perfect plan for women. What fellowship hath light with darkness?
I like what one man said to Ken and me about these types of comments, Diane. They are the accusers of the brethren and are Satan’s agents for destruction so we shouldn’t ever have to defend ourselves against their accusations. We know that greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world!
Thank you for this post. ? To be honest it is hard to me to be joyful during motherhood. My generation experience is that the grandparents are busy; they do not want to spend time with their own grandchildren. We, parents, are extremely tired all day long. I know this is the plan of Satan to destroy us. Hard to see that nearly all of the world is being entertained while Christians try to raise the next generation in this chaotic world.
Sorry I was negative.
I trust in Jesus. He always helps.
God bless you all.
I enjoyed this post as well, Lori 🙂 The ‘joy of motherhood’ is not something that comes over night or naturally. It doesn’t for me. I think it’s a lot about my attitude. I can either view being a wife and mother as my ‘job’ or as my ‘joy’. I often wondered how Christ could have had joy in enduring the cross, but I realize He loved us so much that He willingly died for us, taking all our sins on Himself, along with all the pain and suffering that we deserved. He is the ultimate example of servanthood and by His death bringing glory to God. Likewise, all our sacrificial acts of love (caring for our husbands, families, homes) bring glory to God.
I also always looked at the Proverbs 31 woman as an unattainable goal. Then, recently, I looked at the passage through fresh eyes and the Holy Spirit helped me realize I was wrong in my thinking. She is actually a picture of Christ and how he ministered to others! It was one of those Ah-ha! moments. Everything she did was not to bring attention to herself, but to bless and serve her husband, her children and others. She glorified God in everything she said and did. Wow! To think we have the privilege to be like Christ in our homes just blows my mind!
Thank you so much for this reminder!
It’s sad that grandparents are too busy to help, Barbara. We love to help our children with their children as much as possible and we love being with our grandchildren. Yes, it’s a sacrifice but we know what’s at stake – their eternal souls so we try to live for eternity instead of the here and now.
You’re welcome, R, and thank you for your beautiful comment. The greatest of all is the servant of all, the Lord has told us, yet so few of us want to live lives in service to others. However, we will reap what we sow and there are abundant blessings in living our lives for the Lord and others instead of for ourselves.
Do you believe that motherhood is for every woman?
Motherhood is for every woman who is married and is blessed with children.
I think you hit it on the nose. We women struggle between what we want and what God calls us to be and do. The battle of the will. This has always been what it comes down to for me when I struggle in my role as wife and mother. It is about what I want to do. What passions I want to pursue. What goals and dreams I have. And really that is not what God wants us to focus on. It is really really incredible how God wants us to give up our wants and passions to fulfill the dreams of our husbands and the needs of our children. And we women get scared and fearful because we think we will “lose out” on life. When I get into this selfish thinking, I begin to reread the passages on being a wife and mother in the Bible and Created to Be An Help Meet and I get centred again.
Do you think every married woman should be a mother, either through birth or adoption?
If they are able to have children, yes, they should have children since God commands that young women marry, bear children, and guide the home. This is part of His plan for us! If they are unable to have children, I believe it’s wise for them to seek to adopt if possible but unfortunately, it’s so expensive these days.
Just as He gave up His throne in heaven to serve and sacrifice for us, He calls us to do the same for our families and others. We must learn to continually take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ and renew our minds with truth as you are doing or the world will quickly suck us into their evil mold.
Motherhood is God’s best “job” He can offer any woman. I have never desired to be anywhere but home caring for my own children. When I say stuff like that though, I usually get push back from women and they use Proverbs 31 to do it. They say that clearly shows a working woman outside the home. I disagree but usually fail to change their opinions. I think they are trying to convince themselves more than me. Thank you for writing truth for us.