What Motherhood Has Taught Me: When You Doubt There is any Purpose to all Your Pain

{To listen to the audio,

join us here at HopeStream Radio.}

You may call it crazy. I prefer to call it curious.

While anticipating the birth of my firstborn I was eager to fully know what it would be like to deliver the baby who had been formed in my womb. I was determined I would not dull the pain with medication during the blessed, rip-roaring event. I wanted a natural childbirth as far as I was able. I knew it wouldn’t last forever. And, besides, I have a strong aversion to needles. I’ll take a bit of pain over a poke.

But, here's the curious thing: I wanted to feel the pain of childbirth. I preferred to go through the whole labour and deliver and experience the excruciating pain and the exhilarating joy.

So, yeah, I guess you could say ‘crazy’.

Maybe the stranger thing is when I was in the family way for the second time, and I was fully aware of the pain that was ahead of me, but I was curious to know if it would be as intense as the first time round.

And by the time I was expecting my third child, you would think I would not need to wonder any longer, but my curiosity got the better of me. For the third time, I accepted the multiplied pain of childbearing that God spoke of to Eve back in the Garden of Eden.

I consider that bearing and bringing forth a child is a privilege and a blessing. Without any pain management medication, I breathed resolutely through clenched teeth and grasped the sheer strength and endurance needed to bring forth life.

It really was an exhilarating kind of pain. It's true when they say you somehow forget the pain in those first moments when you embrace the invigorating joy of seven pounds of new life placed in your arms.





It’s also true: we are often fearful of pain and suffering. If we can avoid it, we will. And I'm not talking about the punishment of pain in childbirth, but all suffering we endure for the sake of Christ.

What does it look like to embrace suffering for the sake of Christ?

I've always been struck with Paul's longing that he expressed in his letter he penned while suffering in prison.

"that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

His goal and aim in life was to know Christ in an intimate and personal relationship. The great apostle knew that to know the power of new life, he would have to taste suffering and become like Christ in His death.

Paul knew it's the one who suffers much that experiences the all-sufficient grace of God.





In suffering we will experience the exhilarating joy of God's power at work in us.

In the storms of life we will see the lighthouse that stands firm.

In pain our purpose is made clear.

A life without suffering lacks the need to look unto Jesus, the One "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame" and was raised to heights of Glory at the right hand of the throne of God.

Resist suffering and you resist seeing God's powerful hand at work in your life.

Gratefully accept the thorns, the tremulous times, the troubles, and trials and God's power will rest upon those who gladly boast in their weakness.

Suffer for Christ’s sake and you will know a Power that brings forth new life.

This suffering brings us low. It hurts our self-glorification. The thorns press in and sting, but that is when God says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

In our weaknesses, the power of Christ rests upon us.





Oh, we're not just talking about crazy or curious speculations in life, but the whole purpose of suffering in your life.

“The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Paul said. The one who was shown he was chosen to suffer greatly for the sake of Christ. He was the one who learned to be content in whatever circumstance He was in.

It was Paul who said, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

Dare I say, 'bring on the pain'?

What Motherhood Has Taught Me: For the Mothers Weary from all the Voices

{To listen to the audio, 

join us here at Hope Stream Radio.}

At the end of that day, I couldn’t rightly remember if I had actually swallowed the little blue pill. Every night at 6 pm my phone alarm plays the harp to remind me to take the blood thinner for my mechanical heart valve. I still can’t get over the irony that the girl with possibly the biggest rodent phobia ever has to pop a pill of rat poison every single day.

But, it’s the kind of medication that I simply cannot forget to take. Without it, clots will form around the valve in my heart and will stop the valve from opening and clicking shut, preventing the blood to flow through properly. As annoying as the distinct clicking sound can be, it is a good audible indication that my heart valve is still working.

Six o’clock has become known in our home as Warfarin Time.

So this night, I couldn’t remember if I really did swallow the pill. I remember the alarm going off. I remember pouring a glass of water and reaching for the bottle of pills, but then because of a distraction, I couldn’t recall if I followed through with this routine I have had for two and a half years now.

I didn’t even think about it until hours later when I found my glass full of water apparently untouched.

I asked if anyone happened to notice me taking my pill. No one had.

In the end, I had to assume that I did take it, despite the distraction, with the smallest sip of water leaving no visible evidence behind because overdosing on Warfarin is just as dangerous as forgetting to take it a time or two.



But, as I was tucking my littlest into bed she became concerned about what would happen to me if I didn’t take it. I reassured her I most likely took it out of habit. She looked up and probed further.

Why do I need the medication?
What would happen if I just stop taking it?
What if . . . ?

The question hung heavy in the room like a thick haze.

It hurts in the chest to breathe in the harsh reality that your seven year old has lived half her life aware she could lose her Mom and nearly has more times that I care to count right now. We haven’t hidden the truth from our children; we have walked alongside them with a fixed gaze, pointing them to Jesus.

In the pause, she switched her thoughts and asked me why I have so many wrinkles. She’s an honest little soul, that one. And well, maybe not the most flattering thing for a woman to hear, those are way easier questions to answer.

She reached up to point them all out, maybe to smooth them or count each one, when I told her flat out those fine creases on my face are not wrinkles; they are beauty lines.



She turned toward the window that was veiled with the roller shade for the night and her eyes lit up as the sun was going down. She laughed with me and pointed her finger knowingly, charging me with the accusation that I just made that one up.

I did, I confess. I made it up. But, beauty lines sound so much more graceful than wrinkles. She can run her finger along the furrows of my beauty lines and we can both be reminded that real beauty is more than skin deep.

As I age, the more clearly I see the lines etched and stretched on my body are marks of beauty in life as they have come from the gift of living out many days. But they are fleeting.

Our hearts will stop pumping, our bodies will die, our wrinkles or beauty lines or whatever you call them, will fade. It’s souls that are left at the end our lives.

It’s the hidden heart that rests in God, the meek, quiet spirit precious in God’s sight that is unfading in beauty.

In the sixteen years of being a mother I have learned a few things about motherhood.

Maybe the biggest thing I’ve learned is that I have barely a clue of how a woman who desperately longs for a child and holds three close to her heart opens her hands up and gives them back to the Lord.

Barely a clue. But, I’ve learned it comes with a breaking. It comes with the crucible. It comes with waiting and refining. It comes with denying self and believing God is the only One who will satisfy our hearts.

It comes from the Giver of all good gifts. It comes from trusting in Him and believing that He gives us all things for our good and for His glory. And there is lasting, unfading beauty etched in all of that.

The taller my children have grown, the more I have needed to get wisdom and understanding.

The more difficult the lessons in life have become, the more I need the Lord to strengthen my faith.

The louder the discord of voices have become the more they drive me to seek the voice of Truth.

It’s those voices that haunt us as mothers.

The voices that hurl all your faults in your face, so that your heart heaves and howls over all your fears and failures; these voices can make you bleed thin.

The tormenting voices that stir up emotions in the stillness of the night lash out at you.

The hostile voices that disturb the peace in the hidden places of the heart unsettle you.

The deceitful voices that speak lies in the dark valleys of every life mess with you.

The cruel voices that scream with comparison that you will never ever measure up can shred you up to smithereens.

Honestly, how do any of us get any sleep the way the voices shriek in our secret chambers?

How do we still these menacing voices as mothers?

Maybe if we see that the seasons in motherhood are made up of so much more than countless diapers and cautious young drivers and curious minds earning degrees.

It’s more than sleepless nights or childhoods zipping past way too fast. It’s more like the seasons are all the joys and all the sorrows that structure our lives.



As mothers, our days are spent in soul-searching longing and heart-wrenching labouring.

The times of waiting and of weaning, the receiving and the giving, the nurturing and the letting go, they don’t end in this life; they spin in cycles and wring us out of ourselves.

Those seasons that burst forth with new life seasons and the seasons that squeeze the life right out of you are all apart of this life as a mother.

Those who continue to long and those who live with the longing unmet mature in these seasons as well. We’ve all been made to nurture and receive and give back.

For all of us this breaks us down to the very fibre of our beings. 

The truth is we all call out in the night, at times our tears will be our food day and night, and we will grow weary from our wailing. The many voices will trouble us, the fear threaten to choke us. 

But, right there: be still and know that God is God. Rest in Him. Silence the lies and trust Him.

Motherhood has a way of stripping us down to grow us into women who hold children near to our hearts, but open our hands to give them back to the Lord.

And when you can’t remember if you have done everything just right, run your finger along every good gift and count every grace that He has etched and stretched across every season of your life.

We simply cannot forget. Our hearts need it. It is time to give God thanks in everything. Those voices will fade away as the One who is Truth quiets you with His love.