The Miracle of Ordinary Motherhood

She sat in her high chair just the other day with sticky hands and chubby toddler fingers clinging to veggie purée. Peanut-butter-and-jelly crumbs littered the table and dirty dishes cluttered the counter.

Surely you can see it. You’ve been there. Perhaps you’re there now with a lukewarm cup of coffee, a filled-to-the-brim sink, a fit-pitching toddler at your feet or a fit-pitching teen stomping her feet.

Another day. Another round of mundane, must-be-done tasks. Or so it seemed.

I plucked the baby from her chair and brought her to the counter as thoughts of the urgent tumbled one over another. Sweeping. Dirty diapers. Laundry. Dinner. Bills and budgets. Schedules and schoolwork.

It’s easy to let motherhood get mired in menial tasks, to see the mess but miss the miraculous. I miss it all.the.time.

But on that day … on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon, God’s extraordinary grace suddenly met me at the kitchen sink. As I walked toward the faucet and placed those tiny hands beneath the cleansing flow …

E V E R Y T H I N G S L O W E D.

And for a brief moment, I sensed heaven bending low. Time paused and I saw with unveiled eyes the sheer miracle of that sacred ordinary moment.

Right there before me was cleansing water pouring; her created hands unfurling; the dirty made clean; the sacred revealed in the common. It was a clear-as-day picture of grace and redemption and resurrection wrapped within a mundane Wednesday afternoon. There in the grit and the ordinary and the minuscule and the mire was a tangible glimpse of the Gospel unfolding.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus foreshadowed his death and resurrection with water and washing. The king of kings, Messiah, foretold of the greatest redemptive sacrifice with an act as ordinary as the washing of feet. A wash basin, water, a rag, a humble servant, and a rag-tag bunch of followers bore witness to an event that would make way for the most redemptive act in all eternity. The sacred intersected the ordinary; and we’re forever changed because of it.

Today, you and I have the immense privilege of living out this sacred service in motherhood. Our role—our day-by-day tasks and our moment-by-moment acts of service—are tangible reflections of the Gospel.

We don’t always see it. But on that Wednesday … I did. And it changed me.

You, my friend, may not see it right now. You may be so deeply mired in the mess that you simply can’t see the miraculous. The kids are yelling, the baby is crying, the dog is barking, your husband is calling, dinner prep is waiting, work is beckoning, the laundry is drying … and it all feels monotonous and undervalued. You wonder if it matters.

Friend … let me tell you …

H E S A Y S I T D O E S.

And that’s all that matters.

The same God who sent HIS SON to be born among the squalor and the commonality of a stable, to kneel among us and wash our feet, to enter into our ordinary … is the same God who infused that ordinary with a sacred, miraculous weight when he turned and raised His son from the grave.

N O T H I N G the son does is ordinary, and nothing we do is ordinary when we are joined with the son. Your gritty work is glorious work. Your common tasks are Kingdom tasks. Your monotonous minutes are miraculous moments. And it’s all because of the Gospel.

So carry on, Mama. Carry on in the sacred ordinary service of motherhood, for the Good News unfolds there. And one day you’ll look back and realize lives were changed for eternity because of it.

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