I had a
very disturbing dream that felt like an spiritual attack. The enemy's most powerful attacks against me come in the form of
intimidation. I woke up at 3am and began to pray in part about my
children. At 330am I began to journal and I wrote for 4 hours. I thought about a conversation I had with someone in our church about their child's desire to be a missionary and the fear that struck in the mother about the dangers of missionary work.
I then connected Michaelangelo’s Pieta and the angels’ message to Mary in Luke
2:35. Both of these show that part of the role of mothers is to offer their
children up to God, knowing that they will suffer. Fathers also must do this, but stereotypically mothers are more challenged by this. This is a “soul piercing” exercise
that requires great faith from the mother, who has temptations to overprotect
her children in order to keep them safe. Luke 2:35 is the warning beforehand
that proper mothering means you will offer your children to God, knowing that
their following Jesus will mean suffering because of the sin and brokenness of
the world. The Pieta is a breathtaking masterpiece that shows the result of
proper mothering and the soul-piercing grief that inevitably strikes the mother
when she has to suffer through seeing her child suffer.
As I was processing
my dream in the hours before morning, I connected these ideas to Genesis 3 and made a
connection I had not made before. Adam and Eve brought sin into the world and
so the world was subjected to futility and cursed. The judgment on the woman
was, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring
forth children.” This clearly indicates that the process of being pregnant and
the act of giving birth would be riddled with multiplied pain. But the new
thought that occurred to me was that childbearing begins with
conception, 9 months of preganancy, and delivery, but the end of childbearing (meaning
childbearing’s telos/goal) isn’t merely a new, live human being. The telos of
childbearing is a mature man or woman who is strong enough to stand against
the evil in the world and to push it back as they exercise dominion over the
earth. They are designed to exercise this dominion by reflecting the image of God and being empowered by God's Holy Spirit. This is what we aim to
produce by preparing ourselves to parent and then through our parenting. And ALL OF
THIS is riddled with multiplied pain.
So of course the
pain that is multiplied includes everything leading up to delivery. But doesn’t
it also include the realization of the mother that her children must leave the
home and face the suffering of life and the evil that works against Jesus and
His kingdom? Doesn’t it include their actual leaving and their actual
suffering? So all the worry and anxiety of what might be in our kids’ lives are
including in the mother’s multiplied pain. The Pieta is an image of the
fulfillment of the prophecy of Luke 2:35. Mothers throughout history can know
that they aren’t alone in the soul-piercing pain that their children’s
suffering causes. Even the perfect Child caused the most acute pain to the
heart of His mother as she was forced to watch him walk the Via Dolorosa and then to be nailed to the cross. The Passion of the Christ meant suffering for Jesus, and suffering for His mother.
Stepping back even farther, how much greater
suffering did the Father of Jesus endure as He was moved to forsake His Son?
The eternal Fellowship that the two enjoyed before time began (John 17:5; John
1:1) was broken as He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that we might
become the righteousness of God in Him (2Corinthians 5:21). Herein lies the
reason why any mother (or father) would be willing to accept this pain, and continue to worship God.
Herein lies the reason why any mother (or father) would humble themselves, and follow Mary, saying, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your
word”(Luke 1:38). It is because the suffering of the Son of God destroyed the
power of death and the evil that wields it. It is because from the death of
Jesus comes ever flowing streams of life to the whole world. It is only through
the suffering and death of the Son of God that death may be swallowed up in the
victory of resurrection life. The wages of sin is death, so the Son of God
tasted death so that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power
of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who fear of death of death
were subject to lifelong slavery”(Hebrews 2:14-15).
Mothers (and
fathers) are taught to have a pain-filled faith that knows that when our
children suffer and hold on to their faith, they too overcome the world (1John
5:4). God crushes the Satan under their feet (Romans 16:20). God’s kingdom
comes and His will is done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10). What a
glorious victory that is ours when instead of over-shielding our children from suffering
we instead strengthen them to head into it and stand against it, fully clad in
God’s armor! (Ephesians 6:10-20).
So yes, there is
multiplied pain in bearing and raising and releasing children. But isn't there a
glorious justification for saying yes to such pain when we see that through the
Spirit-empowered faithfulness of our children, they in small ways bring heaven
and earth together in a foretaste of the new world (Matthew 19:28). In their lives they demonstrate Jesus' ultimate victory over sin and death.
The glory doesn’t
make the pain less multiplied. But it does lead us to conclude that the
sufferings of this world cannot be compared to the glory that is to be revealed
in us (Romans 8:18)!
May this encourage and inspire you to
raise your kids as stewards, ultimately offering them to God and longing first
for their strength, not merely their safety.
