Mom's Legacy of Love: A Mother's Day Reflection

Erin Smalley: As we get closer to Mother's Day, on today's episode we want to talk about finding your identity in Christ. Welcome back to Mom's Legacy of Love. I'm Erin Smalley, joined by beautiful Whitney Lowe. Whitney, we're talking about identity today. Tell us about your faith journey. When did you become a Christian?

Whitney Lowe: I grew up in a Christian home, and I'm really thankful for that. It was not just a nominally Christian home. It was parents and grandparents who really actively were invested in my faith. I always say that I think God formed my testimony in college through a number of struggles including disordered eating.

I think I learned about sin and why I need a Savior and really started to relate to Jesus in that way. Since then, it's been realizing you never totally arrive. You're always learning and you're always growing. That's how I would describe it.

Erin Smalley: I know for me, I didn't become a Christian until I was 19 in college. Hilariously, I came to the Lord through—many listeners probably don't remember—the Power Team. It was this Christian group of weightlifters that would travel around and evangelize. They did things—I had to look up to remember exactly what they did—they would rip thick phone books in half. I know they would lift refrigerators. They would snap chains while flexing.

Whitney Lowe: And you were like, "Yes, Jesus!"

Erin Smalley: Somehow, some way that spoke to my heart. I am not sure why, but I remember I was there with my brother and I went forward. It was definitely a journey to that point and it was just in that moment. I'm not sure why I ended up here.

Whitney Lowe: The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Erin Smalley: He sure does.

Whitney Lowe: Through the phone book people.

Erin Smalley: Yes, I just look back and think there could have been so many other ways, but that's how the Lord brought me into His Kingdom. It's so funny.

Focus President Jim Daly talked to Lisa-Jo Baker. She's originally from South Africa and she lost her own mom when she was young. For a while she wrestled with her desire to get married and whether to have kids. Here is a part of her amazing story.

Jim Daly: Let me dial your story back to when you were a teenager with your mom because I can remember so much of who we become is somewhat, if not significantly, related to our parents and what we learned from them at an early age as teenagers.

Talk about the influence of your mom. What was that like? It sounds like when a little girl grows up and she struggles with whether or not to become a mommy, there usually are some reasons for that. So I'm trying to get to that. What was happening in that relationship with you and your mom?

Lisa-Jo Baker: I think it was a combination of things, not just to do with my mom. First of all, my mom was very insecure in herself as a woman. I think she had an insecurity in how she appeared, what she looked like, what she did.

Then when she became ill and there was a vacuum of her voice in my life, I was part of a very conservative church that had a very strong message about what it thought little girls should be. It was a difficult place to be in as a 16-year-old to feel like there was a dictated set of terms that was expected of you and that if you didn't live up to this, Jesus didn't love you the same as all the other little girls.

Jim Daly: Give me an example of how that came to you as a little girl. Was there somebody in your church?

Lisa-Jo Baker: I was 16. Here's a good example. I was 16 or 17 and I was after church one day. I think I had made some offhand comment about how I don't ever want to get married, I don't want to have kids, I want to be a lawyer—the kind of statements teenagers make.

Two very well-meaning elders in our church pulled me aside and basically let me know that if those were my choices, then Jesus wouldn't approve. I was unlovable if that's what I was choosing. Another story that's stuck with me for years—here I was in the middle of my mom dying, losing the woman who's supposed to be my guide into womanhood.

I was angry and sad and I'd lost my mom, and my dad lost his mind after my mom died. There wasn't someone to help me navigate all that transition into womanhood, to make sense of this Gospel I had grown up in and this Jesus I really believed loved me.

But this message seemed very confusing, that His love was conditional on certain behaviors on my part, and one of them being getting married and bearing children. That part of the equation I just wasn't interested in.

Jim Daly: How did God begin to work on your heart that way? How did that story begin to change?

Lisa-Jo Baker: He's so patient. He loved me relentlessly. One of the most significant moments for me—I'll never forget it—I had just started dating the man who's now my husband. We were attending a small church on the North Shore of Boston, college students.

After church service one day, a huge Black man was standing in front of us. I'd never met him before. He turned around and introduced himself. His name was Chuck, and he said to me, "I'm so sorry if this is embarrassing for you, but I have a message for you from God."

Jim Daly: What did you think at that moment?

Lisa-Jo Baker: I wanted to disappear into the floor. Please don't tell me this is happening. Could this be more awkward? Of course, I smiled politely as good Christian girls do and said, "Sure, I'd like to hear what you want to share with me."

He looked at Peter and said, "Are you two engaged?" That's not awkward at all when you've just started dating. So we shook our heads no, we're not engaged. He said, "I'm so sorry if this is embarrassing, but are you planning to be engaged? Are you planning to marry?"

I remember looking at the floor, blushing, and Peter in a very quiet voice said, "Yes, we are," because we had talked about it. Chuck said, "I have to ask you one more thing. When you get married, are you planning to have children?"

At that point, I wanted to tell him, "No, I'd rather eat glass." No, I'm not going to have children, I don't want to have children. I looked down at the floor and just shook my head quietly. Then he looked relieved and said, "Okay, good, because God wants you to know that it doesn't matter to Him if you have children or not. He wants you to know He loves you for you. He just loves you for you."

Jim Daly: And you were struggling in your heart with this very question.

Lisa-Jo Baker: I just started weeping. I'd never in my life had someone speak directly into my life about something they couldn't possibly have known. Then he said to me, "Did you grow up in a church where it was really important for them that you have children?"

I said yes. He said, "Jesus wants you to know He just loves you for you. Everything else is a gift." It was a radical, life-changing moment for me to have someone speak Jesus' truth to me like that.

He loves us for us, not because of us but because of Him—not because of what I do, but because of what He's done. Children or jobs or work or callings, those are gifts that get added to the equation, but they're not what defines us in our relationship with Him.

Erin Smalley: Such a beautiful story from Lisa-Jo Baker. That's a reminder that God knows the desires of your heart. Let's hear now from Karen Ehman and Ruth Schwenk. They spoke with Focus on the Family President Jim Daly about common lies moms believe, like the ones that say, "I'm just a mom."

Jim Daly: Let's go with myth three. I thought that was a good one. You said, "I am just a mom." In fact, one of you had the story about pulling up to the bank window. What happened?

Ruth Schwenk: I pulled up to the teller and she said, "I need to update your information in the computer. Can you tell me what your occupation is?" I always struggle with that because I do work from home. I have the blogs and write and such.

But sometimes I say homemaker, sometimes I say I'm an author. This particular time, I said I'm a homemaker and she looked puzzled. She's like, "A homemaker?" I said, "Yes, I'm a mom. I'm at home with my kids." She said, "Okay, so you're just a mom?"

In my mind, I've seen blog posts everywhere about that phrase "just a mom." I was like, "Yes, I'm just a mom, I'm a mom." She repeated it again, "So that's all you do? You're just a mom?"

Jim Daly: You did change banks, right? But for guys, we don't really—if somebody says you're just a dad, we kind of brush it off and keep going. "Just a mom" to a mom, it's a knife that goes so deep because it devalues you.

How do you, within yourself, build up a wall to say, "No, this is an important thing. I'm doing the most important thing a human being can do, and that's raising the next generation"? How do you convince yourself of that?

Ruth Schwenk: I think the culture views success in a different way, which is why there is that pressure to not be just a mom. But recognizing who we are in God's eyes first is so important for a mom.

We're a child of God, no matter what we do. Motherhood is one of the most important jobs you can have. We're raising children to be light and love and truth to the world.

If we can accept that God has called us to be the mother of our children and we can see it in that light, then we realize how important our job really is.

Jim Daly: Karen, you have a 19-year-old and then 20-somethings, so you're a little further in that spectrum. You have more to look back on than Ruth, but expand on that a little bit now that you have a little more experience with older adult children.

Karen Ehman: I think I struggled a lot with what she's saying about culture saying if you don't have a title behind your name that either is an important job or a degree, that somehow you've missed your calling. You're not doing something that's important in society.

But I know for me, I had to tell myself I'm not here by default because I couldn't do anything else. I was here by choice, and it wasn't because my husband was real wealthy and I could be a stay-at-home mom and a work-at-home mom for the seasons that I was.

We made some sacrifices so that I could be there with my kids and do some things that I wanted to do in that short little season. Whatever season you're in and whatever way you are approaching employment, you're going to have some sacrifices.

Moms just need to be doing things for their kids—not that dads can't do it, because dads can do it. It's just different. There's a role for both mom and dad. Still to this day, when I'm sick and I'm in the bathroom and I'm about to toss my cookies, I want my mom. I love my dad, I don't want my dad, I want my mom.

Especially in those younger years, I've noticed a progression as my kids got older. They want dad sometimes to help them with some different things in life as they get older, but when they're tiny, they want mom.

That puts pressure on you and you have to make adjustments, whether it's with outside activities or employment or whatever. But to realize that you're there for your kids and it's not something you see immediate results in—like jobs you get reviews and bonuses—four-year-olds don't follow you around the house saying, "Way to go, mom, you're so wonderful."

Proverbs 31 says our children rise up and call us blessed. Sometimes it's not until they're 22 years old and they send you a text message saying, "Thank you, mom, you've always been there for me. I never tell you that enough," which just happened to me a week ago.

He didn't do it when he was four. It took 18 years. Just hang in there. You're doing important work.

Jim Daly: Why do I always cry when I come here? I love that emotion. That's a mom's heart. You don't get immediate feedback and a "good job" sometimes. You do it because you're doing it for the kids and you're doing it for the Lord.

Erin Smalley: I love Ruth and Karen's insights. Whitney, what's a lie you've struggled with and how have you learned to replace that lie with God's truth about you?

Whitney Lowe: For me, there's this one parable about the talents where the master says to the servant, "To whom much has been given, much is expected." That also is a Spider-Man quote, and I sometimes conflate the two.

The point is, when God gives you resources, He wants to see you use them well. That's actually been used as a voice of condemnation at points for me. If I have all of these gifts and all of these resources and I am not using them to their full potential, God's disappointed in me.

That's actually not God's heart for us at all and that's not the point of that parable. But allowing God into that space of "Are you disappointed in me? Is this something where you are looking down in disgust because I messed up?" So learning to encounter God's grace for me as a mom has been hard and it's been really cool.

Erin Smalley: It is so true. So often we read scripture as moms and take just a piece of it and apply it. Sometimes we misapply it. I love that you were able to see that wasn't even the point of that scripture.

Yet the enemy is using it to stifle you into making you believe that God is disappointed in you, which is exactly not the case at all.

Whitney Lowe: Like look it up, right? I feel like just as a side note, if you're a mom and you have a scripture running through your mind that feels like oppressive, go read that whole text. Find the Lord's heart in that and see if maybe you're missing something really important. I think that's such a good reminder.

Erin Smalley: For me, the lie that has just hung around for a long time is "I'm not good enough" or "I'm not doing enough." Of course I'm doing a lot, but continuously going no matter how much I give, specifically as a mom, it's not enough. I need to give my kids more.

I love in 2 Corinthians it talks about "my grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness." I love that we can turn to Him, thank goodness, and say give me what I need for this day and for this moment. Moment by moment, give me what I need because Your power is perfect in my weakness. I know for me it just helps me to relax and know that it's okay.

Whitney Lowe: And to watch Him do it, to watch Him show up, give Him those opportunities. Amen.

Erin Smalley: We have an article on our show notes called "Affirming Mothers Every Day." It's written by our friend Gary Thomas and you'll find it in our show notes. Also, Jody Berndt has a book called *Praying the Scriptures for Your Children*.

It'll give you some practical ways to pray over your kids regardless of the season of life you're in. You can request that for a donation of any amount to Focus on the Family. See our show notes for more information and how to get these resources. Finally, we'll post a link to follow Whitney's blog. Whitney, tell us about your blog.

Whitney Lowe: I really post Instagram devotions. That's kind of one of the main things that I do is just trying to help women encounter God's word a little bit more easily or maybe just in those moments when you're feeling a little bit alone. I'd say mostly Instagram @whitneypearsonlowe.

Erin Smalley: Awesome. By the way, as this episode releases, happy birthday Miss Whitney! I'm so excited.

Whitney Lowe: My future self thanks you.

Erin Smalley: Awesome that we get to celebrate with you. Yay!

Next time we're going to talk about how to experience peace even during the ups and downs of motherhood. I'm Erin Smalley and for Whitney Lowe and everyone here at Focus on the Family, thanks for listening to Mom's Legacy of Love.