Womanly Dominion - Chapter 6 - In Scriptural Motherhood

7 years ago I became a mother and 18 months later my second boy was born. He was soon to be followed by 2 precious babies that I did not get to hold in my arms and then I was blessed once again with another boy. I am sat here typing this with a further blessing from God kicking away safely in my womb who I look forward to meeting in 12 weeks time. In 7 years my life has changed dramatically.

If you ask Google what motherhood is there is often many comical answers. Here are some of my favourites:

• Motherhood is saying things like "Don't put dinosaurs in the toilet"
• Eating nothing but sandwich crusts.
• Mother...one person who does the work of twenty...for free.
• Motherhood .... is painful.
• Wearing clothes decorated in hand prints and stickers.
• Entertaining company while you pee.
• Taking a break from sleeping...for 18 years.

Isn't motherhood sounding glamorous right now?! You might be laughing but there is truth in all those comical things people say about motherhood. It isn't the most glamorous job and it can be jolly hard work...but it is a work that is giving to us by God. Motherhood is not all about wiping messy faces and endless piles of laundry. There is so much more to it and great value in motherhood.

Mark Chanski says this "Motherhood is that dignified and strenuous life vocation taken up by a woman who has resolved to give herself fully to the task of nurturing godly children from a godly home environment".

When my first boy was a year old I was asked the question "What do you do?". How did I respond to that question...truthfully I stumbled and eventually came out with oh I am just a mum and then I stood there silently berating myself. Just a mum! Did I really say this? Why? For some time my answer to the question of "What do you do?" was either followed with I study law at university and then this was followed by I work for a solicitors firm in the RTA department. I felt the pressure of the world to conform to society's standard of trying to be a mum and have a growing career at the same time but I had made the decision long before children came along that when they did they would be my priority and not an advancing career. So at 8 months pregnant I left that solicitor's firm and became a stay-at-home mum. Hillary Clinton was famously quoted on the issue of staying at home with the children during her husband's presidential campaign and said this, "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfil my profession". Something tells me she didn't fully understand what motherhood meant...after all my cold cup of tea still remains on the kitchen counter from this morning and having just got the children to bed now I may have a chance of drinking it. Baking cookies is indeed fun and we certainly enjoy the end results but not the substance of what I do. I was absolutely certain that my decision to stop working on a career was the right thing to do, so back to that question "What do you do?". Just a mum is an answer you should never give. God sees the value in motherhood, I knew this, but something within me at the time was not ready to admit that my view of motherhood, God's view of motherhood, was different to that of the world and it was not to be ashamed of. 7 years on and when asked this question I proudly proclaim that I am a mother to 3 boys and I'm a home-maker. I have finally realised the value in raising children.

Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control. 1 Timothy 2:15

Mark Chanski points out that when a woman gives herself wholeheartedly to her God-ordained occupation of mothering, she is saved from many spiritual dangers. She is kept safe from arrogantly taking on a ministry to which she was never called and for which she was never equipped.

James Hurley said this "In his day the bearing of children which Paul selected as a part to represent the whole of the high calling of women was a valued activity which women embraced with joy and with pride and for which they were deeply respected".

For me this chapter should come with a word of warning though, and that is in using the phrase the high calling of women. I am aware that there are many women who find themselves in circumstances that are not ideal, single mothers, mothers with husbands not fulfilling their bread winning role, single women longing to find a marriage partner to start a family with. I have friends who long to be married and married friends who are longing for children and have not been able to conceive. In attempting to put the value back into motherhood we should be careful that this phrase of the high calling of women does not make the single women or childless to feel that they are unequal and are not doing worthy roles in society. As we go and teach mothers to embrace their role and teach women to not devalue the role of motherhood we should do so with love and compassion for there are women who ache to feel the warmth of a child in their arms and have their very own bundle of joy and my heart breaks for these women, I have walked the paths of pregnancy loss and carry my own scars of grief. Let us be careful not to scar these women any more.