Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Children & motherhood

Failure to launch

So, what if you started a moms group and no one showed up?

This summer, it was on my heart to try to start some sort of weekly moms gathering at our church, even though there aren’t a lot of stay-at-home moms in our church. I’ve just been really burdened for mom company and offering a place where moms can get together for a little while during the day and get to know other moms. Over the summer, I repeatedly heard the message, “Reach out.” If I wanted friends, I needed to take the first step and not wait for someone else to reach out to me. I didn’t have a curriculum or concrete plan in mind; I just thought we could get to know each other to start and go from there, eventually reaching beyond the church walls to our neighbors and moms in need in our community.
The first week, two older moms (whose kids are grown and are grandmas) showed up to support me so I wouldn’t be alone. It was a touching and thoughtful gesture that almost made me cry. (Of course, it doesn’t take much to make me cry these days!) This week, Isabelle and I played in the nursery by ourselves.
I wasn’t too discouraged after the first week; it’s sort of what I expected. And as we walked home after meeting Phil for lunch, I felt God impress on me the words “faithful with a few things.” It comes from the Parable of the Talents, found in Matthew 25. Jesus tells a story of a man who leaves his possessions to servants to care for while he’s gone. The three servants are all given different amounts and do different things with them. The first two servants grow their master’s possessions while he’s gone, and the master says to them, “You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.” (Matthew 25:21, NASB)
I believe starting small is a good thing, but that also takes time and patience and faithfulness. I know of other moms groups that started with 2 or 3 and have grown multiple times that over years. I know God can do that here, but He also could keep us small or impress on me that maybe this isn’t the right time or place. I know it’s in His hands, so I cling to His encouragement, “faithful with a few things.”
I have a little more marketing to do to get the word out more about the group, but my first priority right now is prayer and looking for opportunities to build relationships with other moms as I meet them. And I’d ask if you have a similar burden where you’re at, or something you’re considering starting, to pray with me, and I’ll pray with you. And maybe a little at a time, we can change the world for Christ.

Family resemblance

“This little one must belong to you. I can see it in everything about her.”

Words spoken by a complete stranger at a picnic yesterday while Isabelle sat next to me eating corn off the cob and potato chips. I told her she’d say the opposite if my husband was present because most people see him in her before they see me. Either way, though, there’s no denying she’s ours.
Have you had people tell you that about your kids or your parents? I used to get it all the time growing up. Either they’d say, you look just like your mother or you must be Rich’s daughter, depending on who they knew. As a kid, when you just want to be an individual, it’s not always a compliment to be told you look like someone else (unless it’s a movie star, of course!) and as a girl, being told you resemble your father can be devastating. Fortunately, we get over such childhood devastations and realize that people were being kind, not cruel. As a parent, it’s a huge compliment to hear that people can see you in your child. To me, it was just neat that someone who didn’t know us could tell that Isabelle was my daughter. It adds to the amazement of God’s miraculous work of using two people to make another person.
As Christians, we can have no higher compliment than for someone to tell us we look like our Father, or that they can see Jesus in us. Romans 8:29 tells us that’s God’s purpose in our lives: “For those whom he foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren.” (NASB)
Ideally, then, the longer I walk with Christ, the more I will look like Him. Most days, I feel like I have a long way to go. Do you know people who exude the likeness of Christ? I can think of a few, and they challenge me by the way they live their lives.
The tricky thing about this is that I want to look like Christ in the way I live my life, but if I know how much I look like Him, it may become a source of pride and then I’m back to looking less like Him.
At this stage of her life, I’m not sure my daughter has any idea she looks like me or my husband, and sometimes, even when we’re older, that’s hard for us to see. So, we rely on those around us to tell us what may be plainly obvious to others but not to us. I think it can work the same for our Christian brothers and sisters. It’s easy to get discouraged and think that we in no way resemble our Father. After all, the world certainly doesn’t make it easy or fashionable to look like Christ. So, maybe what needs to happen is that if we see someone doing something Christlike, we encourage them and say something like “You look like your Father,” “You must be a child of God” or “I see Jesus in you.”
Maybe that sounds kind of cheesy, but I think it could go a long way in lifting each other up and helping each other get through one more day. I’ll look for more opportunities to tell people that, and in the meantime, I’ll ask God to show me how I can be more like Him.