You’re going to face some exhausting moments this week. Maybe it feels like you don’t do anything but make meals, clean up, take care of kids, pay bills, and fall into bed exhausted. It’s okay to admit that you’re tired. It’s right to cry out to God in desperation. It’s okay to ask people for help. But it’s not okay to sin.
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One disadvantage, if there are any, of “growing up Christian” is that profound scriptural truths can become clichés we take for granted before we really understand what they mean. One such phrase is “do it in God’s strength, not your own.” We’re on sound biblical footing with this: “. . . whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—” (1 Peter 4:11). ‘Tired?’ we ask. ‘Well, you’re trying to do it all on your own strength, just rely on God’s strength.’ (If I had an hour for every time that’s been said to me concerning my duties I’d have time to do them all and bake bread from scratch.) But increasingly I’ve had the question what does that mean?
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I am a stay-at-home mom. There are days when I am at home in my job, rocking the comfortable clothes and cuddles and cookies in the oven. But there are days (or perhaps times in each day) when it’s sheer hard work. It’s constant interruptions (even the interruptions are interrupted). Sometimes it can seem like an endless round of thankless menial tasks. A precious friend of mine, a wiser woman than I, once described motherhood in a comment on this blog as a series of deaths to self. (My Self wants to write this right now. My Self has been interrupted by my Duty (and his big sisters and his baby brother) seventeen times since I started this paragraph.)
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