Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate that mothers working within the home, and those working outside, can both grow into the biblical model of womanhood. I’ve learnt to view neither role with condescension or condemnation.
But it was only when I began wearing both hats of being a mother and a career professional, that I truly understood the daily roller coaster of emotions this involves.
I took a while to understand that only Christ can redress (and how!) the many complex pressures every mother working both inside and outside the home experiences.
Initially, I wasn’t well prepared to cross over from an exhilarating and fast-paced work environment at a top-tier law firm to the monotonous and weary days of brain fog as a new mother.
The more we internalise and appropriate our primary identity in Christ (and not in our motherhood or careers), the more the grace of God frees our souls, warms our hearts and strengthens our arms.
At the end of a work day as a lawyer, my performance-driven nature found joy, worth, and, validation when I could count a task well done, or a matter closed.
With motherhood though, a well-fed baby with a clean diaper, yet often colicky, hardly seemed like an achievement at the end of the day.
I was living with the wrong goalposts, measuring myself with parameters that were designed to crush; not give joy and life.
Countless other mothers who are also working both inside and outside the home know this emotional roller coaster all too well.
The Many Struggles of Wearing Both Hats
When there are pressing needs at home, they feel awkward to leave work early. When they need to put in long hours, they feel guilty for not giving enough time to the family.
Many such mothers flinch and bear it. Others ignore and suppress it. Only a few flourish in the abundant grace that Christ has called us to.
The more we internalise and appropriate our primary identity in Christ (and not in our motherhood or careers), the more the grace of God frees our souls, warms our hearts and strengthens our arms.
In my heart, I wanted to be a good mother. But I didn’t feel equipped for the role. There was this persistent feeling that I was falling short.
Loads of free advice that new mothers receive were burdensome at times. Stated and unstated expectations of people around me only added to my insecurities as a young mother.
I sometimes found myself wanting to escape motherhood and only be a professional once again.
It took me a while to realise that all this confusion was because a large part of my identity was not rooted in Christ.
God originally created humanity to have a deep and abiding relationship with Him. And, flowing from that, to be at peace with ourselves and live in communion and harmony with one another.
However, sin wrecked that original plan. We began to wrongly feel rejected by God, and rejected by one another. Ultimately, we began to even reject ourselves.
Sin Cuts Both Ways
For many of us, the idea of being rejected is unsettling. We all experience this to varying degrees. And, to avoid being rejected, we overcompensate.
We, the people-pleasers, exhaust ourselves to ensure that people like us, appreciate our work, commend our parenting, and praise our kids.
Parenting out of a place of guilt leads to excessively permissive parenting. Working at a job out of a place of guilt leads to dissatisfaction, people-pleasing and, ultimately, burn out.
Often, we are even unaware that these efforts are actually self-centred and manipulative. We are only trying to ensure we don’t feel the sting of rejection, at any cost.
For some others, the deep rejection they endured in the past has now turned them into perpetrators of rejection.
We, the perpetrators, have high expectations of people around us. We are quick to communicate our disappointment in people, valuing systems and results more than individuals.
For this group—the perfectionists—being a working mother is just as exhausting.
Our relationships at work and with our children become fractured because we are constantly berating loved ones and behaving entitled.
These rejection narratives consciously and subconsciously influence both our motherhood and careers. And the pressure of managing both fronts with mere human coping mechanisms is often devastating.
Working mothers often battle guilt, both at work and at home.
Parenting out of a place of guilt leads to excessively permissive parenting. Working at a job out of a place of guilt leads to dissatisfaction, people-pleasing and, ultimately, burnout.
Discovering the Gospel Afresh
I realised that rejection is the root problem haunting many working mothers. Then it dawned on me that reconciliation with God and with others is the solution.
Only the gospel—the good news of who Jesus is and what he has done for us—can bring joyful and wholesome reconciliation.
How can we, as mothers, preach the gospel to our own hearts?
If our guilt flowing from rejection cuts both ways, the gospel of grace is sure to heal us both ways.
If we are prone to people-pleasing, our hearts need to grasp that we are wholly accepted by God through the redeeming work of Christ.
Once fear of rejection shaped how we live, work or parent. But now grace transforms our labour to giving and serving; not earning the approval of others.
If we are prone to perfectionism, our hearts need to remember Christ, the only perfect one, who died to absolve us of all our sins, shortcomings and inadequacies. He invites us, commands us and empowers us to extend grace in the shortcomings of others, just as he covered our own inadequacies.
Grace moulds us to do this in love, not from a place of superiority or pride.
Mothers working inside and outside the home: take heart!
Ultimately, we belong to Christ (1 Cor. 3:23). Working mothers are not slaves to their employers, nor do they belong to their kids. A mother’s primary identity is that she belongs to Christ.
Her intrinsic value and worth are imputed to her by Christ, through His sinless life, atoning death and justifying resurrection.
Christ empowers every mother working both inside and outside the home to operate freely and joyfully from a position of grace and strength, rather than from guilt and insecurity.
In your own strength, you can do nothing to make yourself a more acceptable mother or worker in God’s eyes. But you are perfect in Christ.
Know that on this side of eternity, we will never have arrived as a mother, or as a worker. But the Spirit of God will continue to renew our hearts and shape us so that we may conform to the image of Christ more and more.
In the meantime, may we learn to delight in and rely on Christ more than we delight in and rely on our motherhood or careers.
