Momology - Thoughts from our Mentor Mom, Paula

GOD’S BIG IDEA: YOU!

Psalm 139

The first essential element for successful outcomes with our children involve our core – which is about knowing and growing ourselves. Understanding and working with our unique temperament, experiences and emotions in a way that develops resilience. Having a resilient core allows us to be more likely to raise a child with a strong, resilient core. Resilience is the ability to recover or adjust easily to change or misfortune.

Motherhood is a crash course in self-discovery. Right from the start we’re wired with a certain temperament, a distinct nature and character foundational to our core and so are our children. We come to motherhood already shaped by our genes, life experiences, and emotional makeup. We all bring both strengths and weakness to this experience as well as our expectations. We are introverts or extroverts, people or task-oriented, practical or abstract thinkers.

We are being shaped alongside our children. God is at work in us and our children. IF we learn to parent by making decisions based on prayer and listening to God’s leading, our motherhood experience becomes a practice of spiritual formation through which God is active and present.

Would God, who so carefully designed the hands that shape children, put any less care into the design and strengthening of a mother’s core? Your temperament, your experiences and how you shape them, your emotional reactions, your passions, and your sense of humor – everything about you was put together with a purpose.

"For you created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb." –Psalm 139:13 When God knitted you together in your mother’s womb, He knew you would one day mother at a particular time, in a particular situation, and, most importantly, with a particular child or children. When He promises that He will take care of everything you need, He isn’t excluding what you need to mother your child well. God has and is giving you all that you need to do this job.

We are known by many names and nicknames by the people who love us. Well, God has names too that help reveal who He is. Just some are found in the Psalms: A Shield (3:3), My King (5:2), Most High (9:2), A Refuge (14:6), A Rock (18:2), A Fortress (18:2), A Deliverer (18:2), A Shepherd (23:1), The Lord Almighty (24:10), A Savior (25:5), and A Light (27:1).

The most incredible issue here is that God wants a relationship with us. He sent His Son here to live and die for us to make this possible. He sends us an invitation to be in relationship with Him, despite the fact that He really knows us as we really are! It is not possible to live perfectly in our roles as mothers or women but it is possible to experience a relationship with God and His love.

Anywhere we go, God sees, knows and guides. So we can lead – and love – knowing God will get us through all the hard spots, all our decisions, all our roles, all our times we can’t hold open our eyelids and the times we’re bursting with joy. God’s hand guides us as we guide our children.