Well,
our family is eight weeks in with number six.
Baby Sean Edward is now sharing his sweet smiles and packing on the
pounds. I’m doing my best to manage on
less sleep than I’d like and trying to lose the pounds that our new little man
is gaining. Meanwhile, summer is nearly
half gone. Swimming lessons are over, and although Southwest Minnesota and Northwest Iowa are saturated with
water, our Colorado lawn is beginning to brown.
A
college friend who is a wife and mom of two e-mailed me the other day. “You just look like supermom to those of us
who have a smaller number of children,” she wrote. I had to smile. If she could only see me in my weaker
moments, she wouldn’t have called me “supermom.” Why, in the past week alone we’ve had a
couple of occurrences of breakfast dishes still on the table at lunchtime and a
trip to the grocery store that involved two shopping carts, a bawling toddler, a
box of bakery goodies on the floor, a couple of grocery-cart-slammed-into-the-heels
episodes and lots of me speaking in my low, we.are.in.public.and.you.are.in.serious.trouble
tone of voice. Not to mention some
bed-wetting, a lost kitten, three stitches on one chin, a toddler falling into
a swimming pool where he couldn’t touch, and several incidents of serious
mom-hollering. Throw in incessant
background noise (newborn crying, big kid singing, brother teasing, piano
playing…) and lots of diaper changing, and you end up with a mother who is more
often closing her eyes and rubbing her temples than she is swooping in to save
somebody. So I reply to my sweet friend,
“Nope, definitely not supermom. Just plain old mom sustained by supernatural
grace.”
In
the last few weeks of my pregnancy I compiled a little booklet of Bible verses
to which I turned in my weaker moments.
I took it along to the hospital when I was in labor, and my husband read
from it to me. Now those same verses are
tucked into the book that I’m reading, which sits next to the rocking chair
where I snuggle Sean E. Two of those
passages seem especially pertinent today:
And He said unto me, My grace
is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most
gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of
Christ may rest upon me
(2 Cor. 12:9).
…But we glory in
tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience,
experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love
of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us (Rom. 5:3b-5).
The funny thing is, the same passages that comforted me when I was
longing for my pregnancy to end sustained me through labor and encourage me in these
wonderful but weary postpartum days as well.
They are verses I turned to as a teenager. As a new wife. As a mom…of one, two, three, four, five, and
now six. They are verses that are true
for you, fellow believer, no matter your current circumstances. They are true whether you are male or
female. Single or married. Young or old.
Parent or not. No doubt, the nature
of the trials changes with time, but the Christian life is always a life of
trials. God has ordained it to be that
way, for in that way we experience the reality that His grace is sufficient for us. We are driven to acknowledge our own weakness
and rely on His strength. We grow in
patience, in experience, and in hope. A
sure hope for that Home where our trials will be over, and where we live in presence
of the One Who’s supernatural grace sustains us now, day-by-day.
