Daily Devotional By Desiringgod Ministry – John Piper Ministry 5 OCTOBER 2024 | Topic:The Measure of a Mom
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The Measure of a Mom
How Women Combat Comparison
One of the great gifts of living past middle age has been the opportunity for meaningful connections with younger women. Through conversations about faith, parenting, or the challenges of ministry, I hear their hopes for stronger marriages and sympathize with their sleep-deprived discouragement over whatever discipline challenges their kids are dishing out. I’m thankful when they challenge me with their deep desire to become more confident Christ-followers and students of God’s word.
As we visit, whether in living rooms or church parking lots, I also notice myself examining my response to their unlined faces, perfect nails, and wardrobe choices so different from my own. I’m grateful that none of the packaging gets in my way now, but there was a time when it would have. Sadly, my twentysomething self would have been intimidated by the beauty and accomplishments of these dear women — and I would have missed out on the gift of their friendship!
Mommy Wars
Second-wave feminism may have played an important role in bringing equity to the workplace and educational spaces, but it also fostered a spirit of competition among women who were coming of age in the seventies and early eighties. Competing for the same small pool of jobs and opportunities did little to encourage collaboration and mutual support, leaving a generation of women friendless, lonely, and unwilling to trust the only people in the room who could understand and sympathize with their challenges.
I’m embarrassed to admit that even after I became a mother at the age of 31 and left the workforce behind, I brought that insecurity into my relationships with other mothers. The world has changed in many ways since then, but the Mommy Wars rage on. While God has always intended for us to support and encourage one another as sisters in Christ, sadly, we sometimes act like the factional church at Corinth with divisions among us, divisions that grow into walls of separation.
Even in the local church, conflict flares unseen in the minds of mothers who allow their choices to become their identity. And with so many choices available, there are infinite ways for us to be divided. Working moms feel judged by stay-at-home moms, while stay-at-home moms feel scorned. What’s the “right” way to feed a baby? To have a baby? Should one opt for the epidural or soldier on unaided through labor? Should we all homeschool our children to shield them from ungodly influences, or should we send our children to be salt and light in the public-school system? Even within the homeschooling camp, there are subdivisions, and if you want to start a spirited conversation, just mention sleeping arrangements or methods of discipline.
When we link our identity and our value to our parenting decisions, we reveal an insufficient understanding of our humanity and a diminished view of the gospel.
Saved by Grace, Not Mothering
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers women a more healthful alternative to this path of loneliness, friendlessness, and anxiety: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).
In the kingdom of God, where right actions for right reasons are the goal, where we consider others better than ourselves, we expand our sight beyond what we wish others would do for us. We go first in doing good. When considering the mother in your Bible study, in your neighborhood, or even in your extended family, how would your attitude toward her change if you assumed that, like you, she loves her child and is doing what she thinks is best for him? The waving white flag that will end the Mommy Wars starts with a heart that assumes of others what you wish others would assume of you.
“Conflict flares unseen in the minds of mothers who allow their choices to become their identity.”
How liberating to realize that our parenting choices do not define us! As women, we bear the image of the Creator of the universe. Our identity is not tied up in our motherhood — and our decisions about how to raise our children need not put us in a particular camp or category. It’s a form of works righteousness when we imagine that our healthy snacks, consistent bedtime practices, and amount of time spent reading aloud to our kids stack up to make us more righteous than the gummy snacks mom who lets her kids have lots of screen time.
Our value has been settled for all eternity in the work of Christ on our behalf (Ephesians 1:3–4). As a child of God, you are not less than if your child doesn’t rise at dawn to practice the cello while you grind the grain to make her breakfast cereal.
Moms of all ages and stages can fall off Luther’s horse on both insidious sides — either with prideful certainty that we’ve nailed motherhood or with shame-filled fear that we’ve almost ruined our kids. (I can remember experiencing both emotions as a young mother — and often on the same day!)
Measure with Grace and Gratitude
Sadly, when we insist on comparing our mothering, ministry, appearance, or career choices with other women, we come up short every single time because we are holding ourselves to an unrealistic standard. Our imaginations create a situation in which it feels impossible to be content because we are continually striving to measure up on every front with the imaginary “perfect” mother on Instagram. Social media hands women a broken yardstick for measuring our performance and our worth. Real life is gritty and imperfect. Unlike the glowing images on our phones that feed discontentment, it requires lots of grace.
We need to measure ourselves and others — with grace and gratitude — against the standard of wisdom in God’s word. Jesus talked about this measuring in his Sermon on the Mount. He cautioned, “With the measure you use it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:2). How might our mother-measuring be more gracious if we stuck to the standards of God’s word and allowed freedom of choice where he does? And how might gratitude for God’s work in and through other women (and in and through ourselves) temper our critical comparisons?
Identity-by-comparison is a no-win game, but it’s a habit many of us take for granted. It may have become our method for measuring our worth in the world, our contribution to the body of Christ, and even our role as wives and moms in our families. If, as Theodore Roosevelt supposedly said, “Comparison is the thief of contentment,” the apostle Paul successfully wrestled the thief to the ground: “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content” (Philippians 4:11).
In the same letter, Paul addresses a conflict between Euodia and Syntyche, two prominent women of the church at loggerheads. He entreats the two to be of the same mind in the Lord, to “stand firm” (Philippians 4:1–2). We can only imagine what was behind their conflict, but Paul’s admonition to unity encouraged them to value their relationship as colleagues in ministry and to learn from one another in humility. Like them, we are one in the Lord and one with each other. Our names are listed together “in the book of life.” We are called to “labor side by side in the gospel,” not to divide and compete over our insecurities (Philippians 4:3).
Lay Down Your Arms
If you’re wondering how to lay down your arms and stop fighting the Mommy Wars yourself, here’s a searching question to help you begin: When was the last time you walked into a room full of women and enjoyed everyone? The talkative and the more reticent? The take-charge leader and the sweetheart with the gift of helps? The carefully coiffed and manicured and the all-natural girl without a speck of makeup?
Overcoming our natural tendency to compare, contrast, and find ourselves (or others) lacking requires a sinewy commitment to the truth that God formed each of us uniquely before we were born (Jeremiah 1:5). Overcoming envy and competition calls for fierce gratitude for our own God-given set of physical, intellectual, and spiritual equipment, as well as those of our sisters.
Older moms, by grace we can model healthy collegiality. We can unlearn old, unhelpful habits of competition or comparison as we learn to trust other women and to thank God for the gift of female friendship. Women of all ages can learn to foster a spirit of contentment by being careful of social media consumption and by bravely stepping into spaces where women become acquainted in face-to-face conversations or side-by-side ministry. We can commit ourselves to the healthful practice of celebrating the decisions and the accomplishments of other women as they fulfill their unique purpose in God’s kingdom.
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