Moms, it's Monday

Lately I have felt a lot of conviction around being prepared for Mondays. When I am not ready for Monday and it arrives knocking and I am all surprised that I have a visitor, it’s just silliness. I shouldn’t be surprised that Monday has arrived. I should be ready. I just need to admit to myself that I am not a fly by the seat of my pants type girl and that going to the Lord to submit my week to him and to ask what He would have for me and my children, is wise and essential.

Proverbs 14:1 says that a wise woman builds her house and a foolish one tears hers down with her own hands. When Monday surprises me, I find me and my kids stumbling through the week with my only agenda a playdate here or there and then all else is makeshift and random and survival. This is foolish for me and I find myself tearing my house down, so to say. I am “tearing down” instruction and discipline and relationships that I have spent much purpose building up. So I have felt conviction to not just have general convictions about building my house in theory and how I want to raise my kids, but to have specific plans each week to carry out the greater vision. I could go into detail, and maybe I will later, but for I just want to focus on the idea that on Mondays, us mamas need to not be surprised by the calendar.

I feel like the Lord gave me two encouragements recently to give me the grace I needed to get through the day. I felt like sharing them, so I will write them out here. And if God sees fit, I had the thought that maybe every Monday I should post a “Moms, it’s Monday” encouragement, as the Lord leads. We’ll see, because I’m certainly not as great as other blogs about remembering what day it is to do a certain kind of post, just like I often forget that it's Monday altogether!

1. Psalm 84:5-7 “Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength til each appears before God in Zion.”

It was a number of years ago when I first read this verse. I think it was actually the year I was pregnant with the girls and I was really battling the ability to get through strict hospital bed rest. I am absolutely spurred on by the words “who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.” Being a Christian is not about this moment or how I feel right this second or how easy something is. I see my circumstance with an eternal perspective, knowing that from the day that Christ saved me until He redeems me, I am ON PILGRIMAGE. This is a long obedience in the same direction. I am walking with Christ not just for thirty minutes of exercise today. I am walking, walking, walking forever with him. My pilgrimage does not take a break or slumber or cease to exist at times. I am always on pilgrimage with Christ. I am in a continual, perpetual, unceasing season of refinement to look more and more like Jesus himself. We are encouraged in this verse to SET our hearts on pilgrimage. We may not see it that way now, but we are being asked to turn our hearts that way and to keep setting them in that direction.

Secondly. We go from strength to strength. I don’t know why but that makes me tear up right now. I need to hear this. It is a bit of a word picture for me feels completely like how it practically seems to work spiritually. I don’t just become a super Christian over time and one day when I am really mature I am just strong in Jesus all the time. I think it’s more like this verse. I GO FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH. Each time I am weak, I go to Jesus. He strengthens me for that purpose, just like when I eat a meal, I am made stronger. Jesus asks us to FEED ON HIM as our daily bread like the manna that came down for the Israelites in John chapter 6. We accept him as our Bread of Life when we are saved, and then he asks us to see him as our daily bread, continually. We go from strength to strength.

2. Isaiah 40:30-31 “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”

I just wrote in a recent blog post about “popular verses” and how when I come across one I sometimes do a little “yeah yeah” song in my head and quickly scan them, looking for some fresh ideas. Ohh. That’s a no no. Lots of conviction the past few years on that one. As I mentioned, popular Bible verses are popular because they are amazing, not because lots of people like them. Only pride would keep me from reading them slowly and with great gratitude in my heart. So I came across ol Isaiah 40:30-31 recently in a quiet time as I was on my way to something else and I stopped. And let the Spirit minister to me. And reading these truths slowly, with hope in what the Lord does in us, I was encouraged. Again because of that word strength. My job is to keep hoping in the Lord. I need to keep believing him, who He is, what His promises to me are, and what He is able to do. That is my job. In that, He is renewing my strength.

Also what struck me about these verses is that word “run.” I joke with close friends that my nightmare is being stuck forever running on a treadmill. When I was younger my gymnastic coaches would make us run for conditioning and almost always I would end up weezing myself into the locker room, searching my red gym bag for my inhaler. These days I could probably just visualize running and end up on one of those rolling oxygen tanks. He he. However, when I see people running, especially people who look like they are in real agony, counting the tenths of the mile, everything in me wants to roll down my window and cheer and holler for them because I think they are amazing. I think runners are superheroes a little bit.

So anyway, I read that part about running and not growing weary and I thought not of those of you who run for fun and it feels good to have all those endorphins flowing through your muscle loaded bodies. That verse for the people in that category might seem easy to overlook. No, I thought of this body that runs only ten feet at a time for a runaway toddler in danger and whose muscles from those gymnastics days have softened into a cushy material. :) This body and running combined with the words “not weary” perplex me and make me curious. I can envision myself doing certain things I do not or cannot do now, but running is never on the list. So I’m reading this verse thinking about how impossible that sounds and I feel the full impact of this verse, that God says that spiritually I can run through my days and not grow weary. I can go through a day that feels impossible and hard and like it’s wrecking me inside and I’m counting the seconds that get me through the minutes that get me through the hours – you know those days I am talking about I think – and God says that the place He desires to get me to is being able to “run” like that and not grow weary. Haven’t you met these souls? The humble people of the faith who seem to just be going through the wringer and they do not complain or give up or have enormous mommy meltdowns and they just cling to Jesus and even support others in their wringers? Lord it feels far away, but let your words come true for me. I want to run through my days and not grow weary. You can do this for me.

Mom, it’s Monday. It’s the beginning of the week. And I’m feeling compelled to start it with promises, with encouragement in my mind, with the Spirit at my side. And to let what He says in His Scripture begin to be true, as I do my work: “hope in the Lord.”