“Life with kids is chaos,” a mother of four once told me. “We might as well get used to it!”

“My kids have destroyed all semblance of order in my life. I can’t even remember what my house looks like clean or what it feels like to get a good night’s sleep,” a harried mother of three complained to me.

These are common thoughts among today’s moms. And I know from personal experience how tempting it can be to throw up our hands and jump on the “motherhood is chaos” bandwagon.

Mothering can be intensely frustrating and often feels futile. Being a mom disrupts every aspect of your life.

Mothers have no downtime, no vacation from raising kids. We cannot take a break from our calling as mothers. It’s a job that requires us to be on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week…

The voice of Despair whispers to my soul, Your life is so chaotic. You might as well give up on expecting anything more. Don’t even try. It’s always going to be this way.

Then the voice of Self-Pity chimes in: Poor, poor you. No one understands how hard your life is. Raising four little kids is so stressful and difficult. Everyone else has it so easy, but you never get a break!

My response to these voices is what leads to either victory or defeat in my mothering. If I entertain these lies, even for a moment, they take root in my soul and grow. Soon the whole day becomes chaotic and discouraging.

I feel overwhelmed and exhausted, and my efforts to bring order and peace seem futile. The moment I resign myself to the “life with kids is chaos” attitude, I no longer have the energy to battle for beauty, order, and peace. I’m resigned to mediocrity.

But when I cry out to God for victory, He comes to my rescue.

He gives me the strength to resist the temptation to throw my hands up in despair or wallow in self-pity.

He redeems a day that might otherwise have ended in discouragement and fills it with peace and joy.

He calms my tumultuous emotions. He quiets my hyper children. He helps me find their missing shoes. He gives me wisdom for how to organize our routine so that leaving the house becomes smoother and easier.

And He opens my eyes to see the sacred privilege He’s given me—helping shape, nurture, and train four future world-changers…

At its essence, set-apart motherhood is not about trying to impress people with our parenting skills but about humbly applying God’s Truth to every challenge we face as mothers.

Set-apart motherhood means diligently seeking to become the mothers God has called us to be, one step at a time. Our job is not to try to become supermoms or Proverbs 31 women in our own strength.

Our job is to surrender to God without reserve and to trust Him with every detail of this heavenly calling.

No matter how ill-equipped you may feel as a mother, God has a beautiful purpose for your motherhood role, and He desires you to be strong and prepared for this sacred task.

Remember, faithful is He who calls you, who also will do it (see 1 Thess. 5:24)!

*****

From Set-Apart Motherhood by Leslie Ludy.