Reflections on the Day After Mother’s Day
On the day after Mother’s Day, when the fun and flowers and watermelon champagne sugar cookies (thanks, Matt—they were delicious!) and breakfasts in bed are now an afterglow, and life returns to a more regular, unheralded rhythm of laundry and cutting crust off PB&Js and scheduling doctors appointments and listening to little kids with big feelings, I need to know that ours is a God who sees what is unnoticed.
This morning, I read Jesus’s words in Matthew 6, where three different times Jesus encourages us to give and pray and fast “in secret. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
It can feel like these unseen acts—sometimes given in love, sometimes with a grimace and a sigh (or is that just me??)—aren’t adding up to anything. But Jesus dignified the mundane things through a lifetime of unnoticed moments. For every story of his healing power recorded in the Gospels, there are far more that are lost to history—giving a patient answer when he felt frustrated, listening as a disciple unburdened himself even though he was exhausted, helping with dinner clean up again, even though it was definitely Peter’s turn this time.
Jesus knows what it’s like to love in ways that aren’t praised by others, but are known by his Father who sees and rewards what is done in secret.
I want the A+, the gold star, the pat on the back, the reassurance that what I’m doing is good, right, enough. We all need encouragement and affirmation, but man, how desperately my flesh wants to be good, right, enough on its own, self-sufficient, dependent on no one.
But slowly, imperceptibly, day after sticky-finger-wiping, sippy-cup-refilling day, God is teaching me to find his eyes in the middle of the hum of activity, and see that his gaze, his smile is already on me.
On my grumbliest days I think what I am most lacking, the thing would fix everything, is affirmation and appreciation. In God’s mercy, he instead gives me what I need most: he gives me himself. And I’m learning that that really is enough to sustain me in that moment.
And he will sustain me a few minutes later when another little one’s need requires tending, and in my own need and dependence, I find myself searching for his gaze again.
Days of recognition and praise are special and necessary, but they just don’t sustain on the days when motherhood hurts or doesn’t look like you thought it would. Every time we look to God in our quiet acts of love and sacrifice, he is slowly forming us into his image, re-training our minds and hearts to receive HIM as the reward for what is done in secret.