Hard But Holy: The Beauty of a Life Surrendered

I know that you know that when you go to church on Mother's Day, you're likely going to hear about motherhood, and that doesn't apply to every single person sitting in this room, but the four of us have been deeply connected in conversation via group text for the last couple of weeks, talking about the direction we wanted this conversation to go, and I hope even if you're not in the same season we are, that you sense the same through line throughout all of it, which applies to every single season because of the truth of the gospel. So I want to start with Psalm 127, 4 and 5. It says, Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth. Blessed is the one whose quiver is full of them. And I love that verse because the psalmist could have chosen any weapon for that imagery, but he chose the arrow, the one that's raised up, held back, and then let go significantly farther than the warrior could have gone on his own. And the women next to me are warriors. I'm so privileged to get to sit beside you three. I'm Kristen Ledlow, Ramana Kiwai. I'm married to Will, who you guys probably know from jumping around on the stage. Oh, wow, he got a whistle. I'm going to text him and tell him that immediately. We have two young boys. Kai is five. Koa is two. Brittany Jones is married to Brad. Hey, fam. It's so good to be home. Yes, I have an 11-year-old boy, Caleb, and a 9-year-old, Addie, who is sitting over here. You've already seen her. She's precious. Joe Watson, married to Dan, who is here now, by the way. The one time you show up late, Brad calls him out. It's the trill of traffic, people. It's the trill of traffic. And I wrote it all down because they've got a full roster here. Bella is 10. Jude is 8. River is 5. Ellis is 2. And you look amazing. Let me just throw that out there. Mary Pickens, married to Jonathan, who pastors our Cumberland location. Ray is 3. Merritt is 1. Let me start by asking each of you to describe the season of life that your family's in. Mary? Ours is tiring but full, for sure. And this year has been marked by a lot of change for us. We both have new jobs this year, and with that comes so many decisions. And something that has been encouraging me lately is Psalm 19, where it says, the instruction of the Lord is trustworthy, and God makes wise the simple. Which is good news for me because I feel very

simple in the way that I think. I don't know what the future holds, but I know the one that does hold the future, and I can trust him and depend on him in prayer. So that's a good place to be. Jill? Well, it's a full house. It is full. Full stop in our house. But you know what? I'm one of six kids, and so I know noise. And though there is no photographic evidence of this, I believe my mom walked around with ear defenders on constantly. Because it is loud, very loud. The dog likes to get involved as well, which just adds to the noise. Wonderful. It's full, but right now, actually, we're in a season of transition. And one of those transitions is that we're just transitioning to homeschool. So with that, for me, you know, we feel like it's the right thing. We know it's the right thing. We're all excited about it, but with that comes an entourage of fear. Just, you know, all the things. You're not gonna be good enough. You're gonna fail them. You're gonna mess them up. You're not equipped. You're not qualified. All the things are just flooding in. And so right now, for me, and really with bringing the kids along on the journey, is this season of trusting God, even in the unknown, and walking in obedience, even when I don't have the whole path mapped out, and just recalling all the faithfulness of God in the past and where he's come through, and holding on to that right now. Yes, no, absolutely. So I don't really understand how I became the most seasoned parent in this conversation, because I still feel like I'm hacking it. But my oldest son is about to transition into middle school, so we're kind of at an end of an era. But it's so fun watching them become real humans and have personalities and thoughts and cares. So I recognize the season we're in right now feels like high challenge, high stakes, but high reward. And I'm loving every bit of it. It's definitely keeping me dependent in a new way. but so much reward watching them grow and become someone that I know God is growing them into. Because it's hard and holy work, and a lot of it is unseen. And I recently walked away from work

that millions of people were watching, and I would have said over and over if you had asked me at the height of it, who are you? I'd say, oh, well, I'm His, you know? It's not about what I do, it's about who I am. And I've been so ashamed to admit how badly I needed the applause. Settling into a season of not much of it, if any at all. Again, it's unseen, but scripture shows us over and over again that God does some of His greatest work in hidden places, in exhausting places, in anonymous seasons. Jesus Himself was mothered for decades, and we know very little about it. And yet, none of it was wasted. So Brittany, tell me a little bit more about how motherhood has changed or deepened your understanding of God's character. Well, I read this quote while we were kind of preparing for today that is from a professor that I really admire, Howard Hendricks, and he said that the process of shaping a child shapes the mother herself. And it put language around what I have experienced this whole time as my kids are growing and they need different things, the way in moments where I think I'm teaching them, I will have that revelation of, oh wow, this was for me. I think about, you know, when Caleb was a baby,

and as all babies do, when they're hungry, they will let you know. And he was losing his mind because it was time to eat, and he had no idea that I was in the room right beside him working on the bottle, right? I was putting it in the bottle warmer, and that takes a few minutes, and the whole time as I was doing that, I just, it dawned on me how many times do I cry out to God? And do I think he's not listening, or he doesn't know what I need, or he can't tell what it is that I want, and all the while, he's in the next room working on it, you know, in his timing. And it really, as I've walked through, I mean, so many examples like that, it's teaching me the heart of a father, you know? And I didn't grow up with a father that I have a relationship with, and so that has always been a stumbling block for me, and the way God is redeeming that through parenting my kids has been so restorative. Even Addie, you know, she was terrified of the tooth fairy, so much so she would ask me to put the tooth under my pillow, and she just couldn't fathom something coming into her room while she was sleeping, and the whole time, you know, when I think about fear, like the thing that was terrifying her, and it was a very real fear for her,

like it did not shake me, right? I knew what was true, and I think about God, and we have very real fears, and things that are much more real than the tooth fairy, right, but we have a God who isn't shaken by the things that scare us, and so I'm so grateful how God is shaping me and redeeming a lot through just learning how to be a parent that I need to be to my kids. So good. Jo, tell me more about where God is growing you now. Well, like I said, we are in a transition, so we're in like a real stretching time right now, and with this transition of homeschooling comes this massive fear of me not being enough, and a lot of that stems back to when I went to university to do my degree, it was only then that I got diagnosed with dyslexia. Before that, I knew, academics just never came easy. You know those annoying people that just always get A's and really high scores? That wasn't me, so you didn't need to worry next to me, but I had to work hard, and so when I got to university, it was that feeling of like just working hard, and then I got diagnosed with dyslexia, and so now that's kind of, I feel that coming in like a lie, that's like, hey, remember, you're not good enough. You're not quick for this.

You can't do this. You can't even think of the words sometimes, and so all those things flood back, and so for me this season, what God is just teaching me is, hey, like what you're saying, I'm working already in the unknown that you can't see, and just holding onto those words that God's given me in the past, and my mother-in-law's in here now, She won't remember this, I'm sure, but when I was at uni one night, I was having to write this assignment and I remember sitting down and just feeling like this bombardment of, you can't do it, you know, you've already failed. And so I was at this blockage point and I think she just kind of said to me, hey, you know that story in Daniel, where they go before the king's men for royal service and God gives them a supernatural insight, an insight and a wisdom and a knowledge that they didn't have, and I'm going to pray that over you. And she probably doesn't even remember saying that, but let me tell you, in that moment, I clung to it and I was like, okay. And so every assignment I was like, God, I need your supernatural insight. I need your wisdom. I need your knowledge. And so right now, as I walk into this season, I just, I'm reminded of that word that she gave me and I'm holding onto it. And that's how God's stretching me. He's like, remember, remember my faithfulness. Remember what you know about my nature. And so we're pressing into the truth. Mary, you've told me, and I want you to tell them what motherhood has revealed to you about your own need for Jesus. Yeah. I think for me, motherhood has exposed some sin that was already in my heart and just never had the chance to make its appearance. I think, you know, when you get squeezed, you see what comes out and motherhood has squeezed me for sure. I would have never said before that I had anger issues or struggled with anger, but then I had a newborn and a toddler and I realized I do have some anger I need to work on. And in those moments where I fail and I mess up and I do something or say something hurtful to my toddler, the temptation for me is to want to excuse my sin and write it off. Well, I'm so tired.

I'm doing the best that I can. And she had it coming, honestly, if you heard what she said. But when I do that, I'm lowering the standard so that I feel better about myself. But when I lower the standard, I miss out on seeing God and who he really is, his glorious standard that is far above what I am, his perfect holiness, his perfect obedience, his pure love, how he never misses the mark. So I miss out on that. And when I lower the standard, I also miss out on grace, that I can't receive grace until I admit that I need it. And so in those moments, I can repeat the gospel to myself that I'm so broken that I need a savior. I need him to change me and heal me and redeem me. And I'm also so loved that he was willing to die for me to do that. And I can have great hope in those moments that, yes, I'm this way now, but God is working in me. He is sanctifying me by the power of the Holy Spirit and by his grace. So in those moments, my hope is that I can show my daughter a model, that we're not going to lower the standard for her, that it's not okay to kick your sister in the face. We have to love each other. We have to love our sister. And there's going to be a consequence for that. But at the same time, I can point her to Jesus, and I can point her and show her where to run to when she messes up. So my hope is that she doesn't see this great mom who's doing a great job, but she sees a mom who is also messy, who needs Jesus, and who's being changed by his grace. My oldest son was struggling to sleep through the night and kept wanting to come into our room. And if you've ever been woken up by somebody screaming for you, it's jarring. And it had happened two or three times in the same night. And you're free to judge me here. I just plugged my ears and rolled over, and I was praying with my fingers in my ears, God, will you please just show him that you're the one that can ease his anxiety? Will you please just show him that you're the one that shows up when he calls out? And I heard so clearly, I am. That's why I keep sending you in there. The reality is the entire earth is populated by mothers and their children. So whether or not you are the sender of the blessing or the recipient of the blessing, God has invited you into his story, and it requires a hard yes. And Jo, you've told me that it's been hard to define your best yes in this season. How do you do so, especially in one that's marked by so much fear and uncertainty? I was thinking about this earlier, and I was thinking, you know, the Bible talks about being transformed by the renewing of your mind and for me and for all of us if we walk in this journey with Jesus what we want to do is daily be being transformed into his likeness and that

comes from renewing our mind and so for me it's taking captive those thoughts those fears and all the time not just like a one-time thing I've renewed my mind and I'm transformed I'm not going to be fully transformed into the likeness of Jesus until the day I meet him right and so I'm on a journey and that is renewing my mind along the way and so taking captive those thoughts and inviting the Holy Spirit into those moments of like God I don't know I don't know what to do right now this this fear this thought is taking over me it's consuming me I also don't know where whose need to me and where you actually want me to be but just inviting him into those moments and daily momentarily allowing him to transform me and renew my mind and so I think my best yes and it sounds so easy it's not easy we you'll all know it but is to invite the Holy Spirit into those moments when I am so consumed with the fears and the reality of what the situation is and saying I know you're a part of this I know you're in this it's like what you're saying where you were making the bottle for Caleb he you were there and so it's knowing and reminding myself I know you're in this just lead me in it and remind me where you want me in this moment Mary you've also described your earliest days of motherhood as being dark and heavy and hard where and how did you find freedom there yeah my entrance into motherhood just humbled me so much so quickly I remember being in the hospital with Jonathan and just feeling like I do not have what it takes and we are about four hours into this and I think I already want to tap out this is not as fun as I thought it would be and yeah I was standing in this huge blessing that we had a healthy baby girl praise God for that and I knew in that moment I was supposed to feel happy and grateful for this blessing but what I really felt the most was sadness and shame I really felt you know like what is wrong with me I felt a lot of that I felt even thoughts like will I be happy again like I used to be and I'm so grateful that in those hard days I had the framework of the gospel to live in I knew that God was with me in that place and I knew that I had the Word of God and the Holy Spirit brought to mind this specific text from 1st Thessalonians 5 which says he who calls you is

faithful he will do it and I just clung to those words in those days and every time I got discouraged I would repeat them I pasted it on my bathroom door so that I would see it I'll never forget when my daughter was about two weeks old probably I was by myself at home watching church online holding her and Pastor Louie was preaching on that text and in that moment I felt so seen by God and so loved by him and I knew that he would be faithful to equip me at this stage he was enough for me he was enough for my family and I can testify that he did that he was so faithful then to equip me he's still equipping me and it gives me great confidence ahead that there's a grace ahead Brit what has helped you when your yes has felt harder than usual yeah I've said this to these ladies but there are many days when parenting feels like my hardest yes and the thing that keeps me tethered to it and to the Lord is this revelation that like it's a calling and I know not all of us are parents in this room but when God calls you to something it is going to take more than you have because he wants your dependence and he wants your faith and he wants to grow you in trusting that he will do it you know like 1st Thessalonians 5 if he calls you he will do it and when I think about parenting and what that's looked like I I recognize that when God calls you to something I'm responsible for how I show up I want to show up healthy I hope and the way that I'm marking my own personal growth is that The time it takes from my failure to my repentance, I want to see that time shrink. You know, I want to see that timeline get shorter and shorter. And as I look at that and I prioritize how I show up with my yes, even if it's hard, I can trust him with the results. It's his call on my life. And the things he's called you to, if he has called you to it, trust him with the results. I have never been more afraid of anything than messing up my kids. But as I have prayed through that and trusted God at his word, I'm not responsible for their long arc life. I am here to show up and to care for them and to raise them and to release them into

his hands to do incredible things for his kingdom and in his name. And the results and how he chooses to do that are on him. But we have a good God who I trust fully because I've seen him do undeniable things in our lives, in my life, in our family, and even in our kids in their young age. So I'm learning that the hard yes is part of following Jesus because he's going to call us to hard things, but in it is where we see his goodness and his faithfulness and that he will do it. Right. One of the things that makes our house, God's church, so beautiful is that motherhood is not limited to biology because Louie and Shelly Giglio have raised my entire generation. They don't have kids except for all of us. And it's a stunning thing. As soon as Louie texted me and asked if I would do this on Mother's Day, it took all of 90 seconds before I said, yeah, absolutely. You're on the short list of people that could ask me to do anything. And the answer is yes. And Shelly knows I can't talk about her for very long without crying. But I have a note in my notes app of the things that she has said to me and about me over the last decade of my life. One of which being if all of this comes crashing down tomorrow, this being my job at the time, we're still going to be your people. And that has proven true. Walking alongside and underneath those women who are just a bit ahead of you. I mean, I've got Carrie Stanfill in my sight line right now. She's one of mine. Courtney, Pray, Duke, who have believed me forward the entirety of this walk over the last decade. Britt, how important is discipleship, not just in motherhood, but in general, in humanhood? Well, I see now how parenting is discipling. You know, we're raising up these kids.

But when I think about my whole story, I don't feel like my faith actually got feet until I was being discipled by someone. And it's people like Shelly, people throughout the story of my life that have just been a little bit ahead of me that were reaching back. And maybe they didn't feel fully equipped to do that. But I have found that I didn't start running in my faith until I started discipling somebody. And it was before I even had kids. So it's for anyone in the room like this is the Christian life that to grow actually looks like looking back. And how can I take what God is doing in me and teaching me? How can I reach back and be pouring into the person coming back behind me? Because the reality is we're all in places where someone's looking at you and someone is admiring something about you if you are living with the light of the Lord in you. And so how could we be cognizant of looking back and saying, I don't have much to give. I don't feel equipped, but it's a call on my life. And so, God, I'm going to trust you to help me find the right people and to do it. And so getting to see that in my kids is pretty great. But I've had a lot of amazing women like just like you who have looked back at me when I didn't really feel worthy or ready and poured into my life. And I'm grateful. Joe, what do you hope that your children remember most about your life in this season? I want them to remember that I wasn't fearful. Or, okay, no, scrap that. That despite my fear, despite my fear, because it's there, that I still walked in obedience and depended on him. And that I loved him so much and trusted him that even when I was afraid, I would still obey him and just consume his word and live by it. If I do that, I'll be happy. Mary, you've told me that the thing your kids need is to see you love Jesus.

So what does that practically look like on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, something that has marked me, I heard this quote from Jen Wilkin who said that time in the Word is worth losing sleep over. And that has just stuck with me and I found that to be so true. And of course there are times where we truly do need to sleep in and we have to take care of ourselves to take care of those around us. But on the other hand, there's a lot of times where my kids will wake me up in the middle of the night and I'm immediately like, oh, I don't wanna wake up in the morning. Like that early. But the times that I have stuck with it and I've gotten that time with the Lord, I walk away and say, I can't believe I almost missed that. That was the best part of my day. And the advice that I've received from older and wiser moms is to love Jesus in front of your kids, to focus on who you're becoming in the Lord and trust and obey Him. And that's going to impact your kids. And I found that to be so true in my life when I think about my mentors or my mom, I'm so grateful for that. And something that struck me to Dr. Lisa Miller, she's a professor at Columbia University and she released this study that showed

that children who are raised in a home where spirituality is shared are 80% protected from depression. And that is such a striking fact. And I think it just reveals what we're made for. We're made to know God, to love Him, to enjoy Him. And so when we're in that context, we thrive. And so I just think about the verse that says, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. And that's my deepest hope and prayer for my kids. That's what I want more than anything. And I know you all feel that way too because nothing is better for them. No education, no great job or spouse matters more than that. Yeah, so good. In 2 Timothy 1.5, Paul's writing to Timothy. And he says, I'm reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice, and I am now persuaded lives in you also. I think so often that my sons are products of my mother's prayers, of her mother's prayers. But I wanna ask each of you, and Brittany, I'll start with you. What is the one thing that you want every mother here, the weary or the discouraged one, maybe the one who has lost their mother, maybe the one who's praying to become a mother,

or maybe the one whose mother didn't pray, what encouragement would you want them to hear from you? I immediately think of my own mom. She was raised Catholic, and so we didn't really grow up in a home where we were at church all the time. We were Easter and Christmas for sure, but that was about it. But I remember moments where she was just leading us as much as she knew how. She would pull out her giant Catholic traditional Bible and would read us stories, and I remember us just sitting at her feet and her reading us the story of Noah's Ark. And there are not many moments I remember like that, but the ones that she did, they marked me. And she was a single mom. We watched her struggle a lot as we got older and could comprehend what was happening, and she wouldn't have known it then, but watching her struggle and watching her be honest about it, but watching God come through for her, it instilled a very deep faith in me that we have a God who comes through for us and a God who hears us. She wasn't perfect. She would say she wishes she did a million things differently. She wishes she had prayed for us more.

But just like you, discouraged mom in the room, you have a God that at the moment you turn your face towards him, he is there. And he hears you, and he has never left you. The verse that's been bringing a lot of consolation to my heart lately is in Psalm 94, verse 18, and it says that, when I thought my foot is slipping, your steadfast love, O Lord, it held me up. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul. And another translation says that when I have a lot of doubts in my mind, that you comfort me and you cheer me up. And I know that we all get discouraged in moments, but my hope for you is that you know how near God is to you, that he hasn't left you, that just like Caleb thought I was ignoring him, you have a God who's so familiar with your struggle and with your disappointment and with your discouragement or with your doubt, with your questions. And I just, I hope that you sense that he is near and he is available and that he is working even when it doesn't look like how we hope it would. Joe, what's your encouragement? I wanna just encourage everyone that, you know what, I remember times when I would be in church and they would say, you know, I don't know when the last time you picked up your Bible was or when you read.

And I used to think, I don't, nevermind the last time I read, I don't even know where my Bible is. But I thought, can't tell anybody that because I've been brought up in church all my life and, you know, I'm leading things. I should be, I should be. But I was so overwhelmed with just the busyness and the chaos of life. And with kids and with their out kids. But I just remember the shame linked to that. And I would want any person to know, mom or not, that God is not too far from your shame. Like, he wants you to show up like that. He's not waiting for you to have it all together. He's not waiting for the chaos to go away. He's not waiting for everything to look Pinterest perfect. He's there and he's in it. And all throughout the scripture, he is always turning up right where people need it. When they wouldn't expect it because it feels too chaotic or it feels too far away from perfect. And God is always near. He's in the chaos and your shame is, he's right there with you and you don't need to be ashamed. Mary, what's yours? So great, so good. My encouragement is that God sees you. He sees you right where you are. He sees the moments where you're faithfully serving

and nobody else sees, but he also sees when you completely blow it and there's grace on the table. And all we need to do is turn and trust him, repent and believe, receive him. And that's our job and that's what's on the table. I wanna close with this. I know that at least one of you is looking at the four of us and thinking we're a little bit like the newlywed couple that launches a married podcast, a marriage, but you know, like, it's like, oh, you've been in this for 90 days. Well done, give me advice. I'm so aware that we are all very early on in our motherhood journeys, that we're closer to the starting line than we are the finish line. And so I wanna encourage the mom whose children are grown and gone, whose children are out of her reach and seemingly out of his. I wanna say that our God is big enough to bring the prodigal home and good enough to want to. And I am not telling you this because I've heard it or because I was told it or because I've read it, but because I know it to be true. Because my own mother spent 20 years, that is two decades, praying for her youngest child, my little sister, to come back to know Jesus. And only in the last six months in that answered prayer has this become the happiest Mother's Day.

My mom and my sister were in the first gathering and I actually cried then. I'm like holding it back now because they're not, I can't actually see her. But I wanna encourage you to keep praying because again, I know it to be true that anything can happen because somebody prayed.