TOTHEUNTAMEDHEART.

Who has the answer to this seemingly ironic problem?
Not I.

I probably should not have been so deceitful posting quite a bold title of hope because— moms everywhere— I am in desperate need of the answer. But I do have a little revelation, a glittering hint of promise to share with you who are with me. Maybe you are the master of momming & giving God his very much deserved time & dedication. If you feel like that is you, please write a guest post for me with the holy truth. Like, tomorrow. I need it ASAP. Until I find the master mother-Christ-lover, though, I’m going to have to kick things off with a little therapy session.

It happened Sunday. Really, it happened way before that because I am brainless & battling out the mama brain, doing empty minded things like booking photography sessions smack dab in the middle of my routine church service, thinking I booked it for the day before. All the while pressing through the foggy feel of I really know I need to be here in this place worshipping but my mind refuses to listen to me.

But it happened Sunday, within the whole forty five minutes I was at church. I was fighting the fog, per usual, standing at my seat during worship rather than going up front because I felt like it would be phony for me to get ‘too into it’, having been struggling lately to make time for God. Sometimes I get in the way of what God deserves like that. Thinking about too much of what it could look like if I give God my all standing up front on a Sunday & not coming close to nailing the follow-God-through-out-the-week part. What if someone notices. What if my kid notices. I don’t ever want to be that phony, Sunday Christian. But God wants me to. Because that isn’t how he sees me, the name he calls me by, or the big picture.

He knows he is still worthy. He knows I don’t have to start from scratch & reintroduce myself. I don’t have to roll doubles to get out of jail or pay $50. So instead, after we begin worship with a song, we begin greeting each other. Except not me because I am feeling super introverted in this moment because I am fighting the fog, remember? & when we’re so focused on ourselves & these inner problems we have that we are trying to magically heal, we aren’t paying proper attention to the outside. But he pulls us out of it.

She comes over to me with a big embrace, we small talk about genuinely missing each other & the busy season keeping me from this place & the music begins again & she grabs my hand & says, “Come worship with up front with me”.

Listen, friends. Although there was a time in my life when someone asked me to pray with me & I threw the word no out the front door before he could even touch my shoulder, I am not in that place anymore. So I went up front, & I stood there, singing along but fumbling with my fingers instead of raising my hands.

Have you ever been one hundred percent sure God just told you something? It doesn’t mean you have to audibly hear it to be true. Sometimes you can’t even describe it, you just know that somehow God downloaded this into your mind in this exact way.

We sung something like “I will praise your name now & forever”,
& that’s when he said it.

When you sing these words, they are not held captive to time. Jesus covered. He was & is & is to come. He can enter into any moment. & he did.

Before becoming a stay at mother, I could never understand how you could stay at home all day & still not have time to sit down, read your bible & pray. Now, as I dream of completed wash, toys put back where they belong, & people replacing the empty cardboard cylinder with a new roll of toilet paper for the rest of us, I get it. Not that it is an excuse but rather a different kind of challenge. I am not saying I don’t ever sit on the chair in the living room & zone out on Facebook, but I can say anytime this is happening I am physically & emotionally exhausted. As much as giving God the time is replenishing, its also a habit that is hard to get back into once broken. & I’ve broken it fair & square, having traded my night time post-kids bedtime ritual of alone time with God for sleep. & thats a shameful kind of feeling, a little bit deflating.

But when I can I whisper you are worthy of all the praise now & forever because I can. Because this is grace, that you can be imperfectly struggling & still come to the altar in complete surrender.

& lets kick the ‘phony’ lie to the curb where we put ourselves on a pedestal, as if we ever were worthy of the mercy & grace received to begin with, worthy of praising a perfect God who loves us in our shortcomings. When we feel this & we are fumbling with our hands & hearts, maybe its best to ask Satan to flee, because we’re allowing deception a seat at the table. This is the only time I will ever teach my kids to say, “You can’t sit with us.” Then throw up a shout of praise & drop your pride in the trash can & awkwardly waddle-dance side to side even though you don’t know your left from your right without the assistance of your thumb & index fingers. Because you will never be worthy of worshipping Him, but you are welcomed & warmly embraced because Jesus & grace. & thats a reason to sing.