God is like me?

Is there anyone like me, who struggles to fit in sometimes. Not that I don’t have friends, because I do. It’s just that I don’t think I fit the norm of what a wife, a mother, a housewife, should be like. When my children were young my priority was to spend time with them, to take them to the beach, to go for a walk together, to discuss whether it was morally acceptable to be a spy or not. I would do the laundry, I would cook all their meals and even make cookies sometimes, but I was more interested in playing with the hosepipe in the garden with them than I was in cleaning the house.

After hearing a sermon about young mothers often feeling overwhelmed, which is not something I identified as an issue I had, I began to wonder if there was something wrong with my early mothering. And then I felt the Lord say to me “I’m like you Mary.” My first reaction was that it should be the other way around – I need to be like the Lord. Then I began to see that the Lord was simply encouraging me. I always preferred to do something with my kids than clean the house. I believe that the Father also really enjoys spending time with us. We may think that he has more important things to do than hanging out with us, but if we thought that way, we would be wrong.

Remember the story of Mary and Martha. Martha had problems with her sister Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus and learning from him, whilst she had to do all the serving bit. She even asked Jesus to have words with her sister and tell her that she should be helping in the kitchen rather than sitting with the men who were learning from Jesus. Aren’t the women supposed to do all the serving? I say that tongue in cheek, but I do wonder if part of Martha’s problem was that not only was Mary not helping with the food preparations, but she was also doing something that in those days was supposedly reserved for the men. Martha, on the other hand, was doing all that she thought was expected of her and wanted Mary to do the same. Naturally she asked Jesus to step in and sort Mary out. And the beautiful response clearly demonstrated that Jesus was more interested in having Mary sit at his feet than he was in having her serve him. And I believe he feels the same way about us – he would rather that we spend time sitting with him than he would we rush around serving him, whatever form that serving may take.

I have always loved being a mother. Having children has brought a great deal of joy into my life. And now having grandchildren has added to that joy. It is easy for me to leave dirty dishes in the sink and go and play tag with my grandchildren. I will get to those dishes later though unless my husband gets to them first. There is something else that I am going to make time for too, and that is spending time with the Lord. He is telling me that he enjoys spending time with me, and because I want to make him happy, I am going to make sure that happens. Every day I set aside time to quietly read the Bible, and time to bring my thanks, my praises, my petitions, and my intercessions before him. And I will also take time to sit silently and allow him to whisper to me. The Father wants to speak to all his children, and I for one am going to make sure that I give him the opportunity to speak to me.