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May 10, 2026 06:00am

Why God Never Meant Motherhood to Define You

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I took this picture a couple of years ago on Mother’s Day. I had gotten my feelings hurt and went on a walk in the rain. Don’t be alarmed; this is normal stuff. Hurt feelings, “I’m sorrys,” and moving on were what our everyday life was made of. Maybe you can relate.

Bringing life into the world is messy, caring for a life is sobering, and sending that life into the world is bittersweet. While mothering is beautiful, tender, and profound, it’s also humbling, obnoxious, and terrifying.

I’m not sure when being a mom became so precious, but it seems our culture has replaced the substance of mothering with pretense. We’ve settled for a glittery replica that looks admirable, but at best is shallow and at worst is harmful. This glittery version of mothering has sold us a lie we’ve believed and caused us to despair if ours doesn’t look the part.

Some of its mantras include:

If you’re a certain kind of mom, you can guarantee a certain kind of child.
If it’s not beautiful, then it’s not meaningful.
If it’s hard, you must be doing it wrong.
If mothering doesn’t fulfill your every last desire, you must be deficient.

We’ve taken “motherhood” and made it a “thing.” We’ve made it the ultimate thing—holding it up as if it is what will answer all our questions and longings.

I think it’s Tim Keller who said, “Idolatry is when you make a good thing an ultimate thing.” And goodness, I’m not sure why or how, but we’ve lifted motherhood as the ultimate thing. In fact, we’ve made many of God’s good gifts into idols. And we know what God does with idols—He frustrates them.

As mothers, we certainly pray, we seek the Lord, and we let Him shepherd us in our parenting. And then, we hand our kids over to Him again and again, and we trust Him.

You know what else we do? We relax. We chill the heck out.

We take our grasping, clenching hands off the outcome.

We mother with no strings attached. Sure, it’s a relationship that hopefully goes both ways, but it isn’t a quest to find who we are in our children.

We don’t place our worth in our mothering, and we don’t use it to prop up our identity. Our value doesn’t rise and fall based on the choices of a third grader or a college kid. We don’t cling to our motherhood or put our hope in our choices, methods, or theology. Instead, we take that misplaced hope and transfer it to the Lord.

He is the only ultimate One. He is the One who gave you your children—not for you to use to further your identity, but so you might share His love with them and grow in your understanding of His beautiful, tender, and profound love for you.