This is the start of my newest piece for The Gospel Coalition. You can read the entire article here!
I mentally ticked down the clock until bedtime: nine hours to go. It was only 11 a.m. Already I was fighting ennui—not because I don’t love my children but because the day stretched ahead of me with the same activities I’d been doing for days before and would be doing for days afterward.
I am deeply grateful to be a mother. But if I’m honest, sometimes the work feels . . . boring.
Particularly this year, many of us have been with our children, and only our children, for most waking hours. Days and weeks stretch ahead and behind in blurry sameness. Much of our work as mothers—whether we’re at home full-time or not—requires repeated tasks. Washing bodies and clothes and dishes, preparing meals and snacks and drinks, driving the same routes to grocery stores and pharmacies and school and church, over and over again.
But in this season of mothering, I’ve taken great encouragement from the ways God’s Word helps to reframe what often feels, to me, like boredom.
Sameness ≠ Monotony
From a biblical perspective, sameness does not equal monotony. The Word declares that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8), and that every gift we have been given is from the Father “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). God is, wonderfully, always the same. He does not change his mind about us. He is consistent in his character and unshakeable in his glory. His law remains, and his truth will endure for all time.
Read the rest of the article over at The Gospel Coalition!
