Righteous Robot.
I was doing everything right. My day was perfectly scheduled to spend time with God, exercise, eat right, go to work, be a good wife, take care of my child, be a good homemaker, be a good friend, be a servant. I had calculated my days so perfectly so no one, not even myself, could fall on my account. Because that’s what good wife’s and mother’s do right?
I’ve learned over time you can be driven by two things, faith or fear, and instead of having faith in God I chose to have fear in my inabilities and as I moved forward I drove myself straight into the hands of the enemy without even realizing it. See, I had never grown up with that natural nurturing “I can’t wait to be a mommy” spirit, so when I became a mom it was scary. I would never say it aloud but the truth was I didn’t trust myself. Which is fine because I serve a trusting God who asks us to put our trust in him anyways! But I didn’t do that. I put all my faith into “my schedule”. “If I can make sure I take care of all these things then I can succeed and my family can succeed.” I was simply doing, doing, doing, doing, doing. Doing things that needed to be done and doing things that didn’t. But when I put my faith in something other than God I cut him off which ultimately cut me off from the wellspring of life and in return nothing was able to flow through me.
Before I knew it I was was closed off to feeling from God, people, my husband, and even from my son. Resentment toward motherhood was starting to rise and it scared me because I didn’t know right away how to change it but I did know I did NOT want it. Thankfully, through the grace of God, I caught the revelation that I had in fact become, in unique terms, a robot. I was moving and doing but I was absent of heart. Love was not flowing in and eventually love was not flowing out of me either. I was so focused on getting things right and providing security for myself and my family that I left no room for spontaneity, for God to move, for my husband to love me, or for me to be free and fun with my child. I was on autopilot.
Have you put your faith in something other in God? Are you starting to resent the life you’ve been given even though it’s good? I know how hard it is to admit these things. Because you love the people in your life so much and you don't want to be bitter toward them and you don’t want to be unhappy. You’ve seen your life as a task but if you let God re-define it he would call it a blessing. Being a mom, wife, and/or a person of purpose, is a blessing. We are entrusted with such a sweet gift of serving our families. We are ultimately God’s vessels and he is longing to move through us. As a woman we get to be used as wives and mothers for God to reach our husbands and our children in ways that can only be done through us. The moment we are moved by fear that we might fail is the moment we close the doors to God using us as his unique instrument to love his people.
So I learned the hard way that it’s okay to have inabilities. I’m not going to be the perfect person, wife, and (god-forbid) parent. I have weaknesses. But in my weaknesses my God is made strong. No structure, schedule, or plan can secure my life and the lives of the ones I love like the security of my God, our Rock. The difference between a robot and a person is a person has a heart. Let God redefine your assignments as blessings. You are called to give and support others in a way that only you can do and that should excite you. Let’s wake up and put our faith and our definition of success in God’s hands and let’s find joy in the significant way he has called us to love others and ourselves.
There is nothing wrong with what I was doing to provide for my family but like the bible says without love I am only a clanging cymbal, I am nothing, and I gain nothing, no matter how great my gifts and works are. (1 Corinthians 13:1) It’s not about getting everyone’s lunches packed, it’s about packing them with a loving thankful heart.
I didn’t get all this at first. I just knew I was lifeless. I didn’t want to be but I was. If you are here and you can feel the darkness closing in on you as you become a “righteous robot” I ask you to stop...open your heart, breath, and allow the Lord to flow in. I still do all the same things I was doing before: dishes, diapers, working full time, supporting a man who works long hours, traveling to and from daycare, meal planning, bath time, exercise, spend time with God, church, etc. The difference from enjoying life now and borderline resenting it then was not an outside factor. It was a change from fear to faith, from believing lies to believing truth, and ultimately changing the position of my heart.
We must stop viewing our responsibilities as what we HAVE to do and start speaking thanksgiving and servanthood toward them.
“Lord thank you that you have chosen me to love my family in a way only I can today, thank you for allowing me to serve them, thank you that you have given me divine assignment.”
Go get your heart back and kick your robot costume to the curb!!!
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