#20. Mothering is Temporary, But Not Disposable
One of the temptations to skimp in motherhood comes from how quickly it goes. Motherhood thrusts us into a long sequence of rapid stages. It’s ten thousand temporary things. Most of our work gets done, undone and redone with tools that will pass and perish. Temporary things are despised. Impermanence bleaches meaning. We confuse passing with meaningless, worth with longevity. Perishable and disposable, though both short-lived, are very different.
The work of mothering through the dependent years is very brief (as infinite as it feels while we’re doing it). We endure, passing the time just to get it done. Christians have a special version of this, where we discount motherhood because it seems so far from eternal. We conclude that because food, washing machines, paints and paper, mispronounced words and odd socks don’t last, they don’t matter.
I remember a women’s conference where the speaker suggested we go home and place imaginary stickers on the things of lasting importance, so we could get our minds off the things which are not. So we could spend less time on the temporary things and more on the eternal. The conclusion being, that people and the Bible deserve a sticker, and everything else is meaningless. I was at that conference with a baby and all the equipment that one carts along with a very small, dependent person. As I listened (sitting on the floor, up the back, discreetly changing a dirty nappy), my hands were full of things that didn’t warrant a sticker. Thankfully. the nappy wasn’t going to last, but my life was mostly nappies which couldn’t be ignored. When we have no option but to do these un-stickerable things, but are being encouraged to invest ourselves in the eternal instead, we end up extracting the gospel from most of life. We start to believe all the tasks and stuff involved in motherhood—work which we intuitively know ought not to be neglected—is a hindrance to following Jesus.
“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” Colossians 3:1-3
When Paul tells us to set our mind on things above and not on earthly things, what are we to do with such an earthy vocation as motherhood? To read it as a call to dispose of as many of these temporary tasks and roles as we can is a troubling and impractical conclusion to come to. Especially if we’ve concluded that these things are our duty, a good owed which God has entrusted us to give. The work of having children and caring for them in a reasonable way demands we think a lot about the things in front of us. Are these the ‘earthly things’ Paul is steering us away from? And how does that fit with his instruction for young women to be busy at home?
I spent years despising the work of my home because I thought that’s what it meant to set my mind on things above. I felt that putting effort into the temporary needs of my children was a waste (at best) or idolatry (at worst). When our attention is rightly set on Jesus as the One who matters most, the message we often hear is that because he’s at the top of the list, nothing else matters, that God is only interested in the first item. The language of priorities and “most important” end up crippling us. We become utilitarian mothers, trying to find the most efficient ways to provide for the survival of our children so we are free to do more of the most important thing on the list. As I wrote previously, everything on the list is from Jesus and for him. It all means something in its place. When we gain space to see that our work, money, marriage, parenting, homes are from Jesus and for him, we learn that they matter and he saves us to ‘do’ them in a new way. This new way of doing temporary duties is part of what it means to set our minds on things above.
If the hourly details of our life don’t matter, Paul wouldn’t have spent the rest of Colossians (and almost every other letter he wrote) spelling out the gospel implications of living in this age. He often addresses wives, husbands, children, slaves, masters with the contours of obedience in these impermanent roles. Being godly in these temporary stations is what it means to set our minds on things above. Thankfully, Paul does explain himself.
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature…
put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator…
And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (excerpts from Colossians 3)
Paul says we’re setting our minds on things above when we put off our old nature and put on the new, renewed, Christward self. We’re not casting off the earth and all the realities of being earthbound (as if we could be anywhere or anything else). We’re killing our earthly nature. It’s a sin and godliness activity, which happens to play out in temporary situations, with perishable props. Temporary space is the stage where the old self is put off and the new self is put on.
Christian mothering is more than efficiently passing temporary time while we make sure our kids hear the message of the gospel occasionally. It’s mothering while we are being transformed into the new, Christlike self. And it’s doing that in a way which immerses our children into the same. When we don’t value the temporary, we neglect the means of our own sanctification. We also miss the lasting goal of our children being formed by the gospel in every hour lived and bite eaten. Raising our kids towards godly maturity is an obedience done from one temporary moment to the next. If our way of “setting our minds on things above” teaches us to despise homes, food, read-alouds, beauty, play, celebrations, culture, then we’ll bypass our purpose in this age. We’ll reject the very tools God has given us to use.
We’re to set our minds on things above where the very human, glorified Jesus sits. Our lives here are to be so dominated by the fact that Jesus is Lord, that we take charge of every temporary facet of earthly life to remind ourselves and the world of his supremacy. We do this, not by treating the temporary details as trash, but by interpreting, ordering and using them, in Christ. We are praying and living toward “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” We do this, not by pretending the things of earth are meaningless, but by putting them to the use for which they were created.
Instead of casting the earthly things off, Paul impels us all,
“Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him...
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord not men…” Colossians 3:17, 23
Setting our minds on things above doesn’t mean we’re to stop doing these temporary things of earth. We’re to do them in the Name of the Lord Jesus, with thankfulness. A mother doing all the temporary things for the Lord, no matter how inefficient and invisible, is one creature living more in sync with how God made things to be. A mother doing everything for the Lord Jesus uses the temporary not to distract from, but to magnify the unseen. She harnesses the impermanent to hint at the glories yet to be seen.
