Reclaiming the Sacrifice of Motherhood
By Kelly Clabaugh
Ugh. Really? I couldn’t help but feel somewhat defeated, catching a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror as I sleepily peel the spit-up stained shirt over the hair I haven’t washed in two days. Or was it three? I honestly can’t remember at this point. I don’t generally consider myself a negative person, but although a combination of semi-healthy meals, periodic walking and the glory of breastfeeding had brought the numbers on the scale back to where they were pre-pregnancy, my mirror apparently hadn’t received the memo. Add to that my stretch mark streaked belly, thinning hair, and hormones that won’t seem to regulate, and I’m feeling, let’s say, less than glamorous. At the same time, I’m wracked with guilt for being anything other than grateful, especially when so many women’s hearts ache daily to be in the same position. I’m not sure when this mental chess game with the devil started, but between the guilt and the shame, I can’t seem to get up from the table, and he always manages to stay three moves ahead.
A Misguided Perception
When it comes to the hearts and minds of Christian mothers, something has gone terribly wrong. We’ve lost perspective; or rather, we have traded Gods view of motherhood for the one sold to us by the world. We have allowed the lies of the culture to take our eyes off of Christ and fix them instead on our daily hardships and losses. These lies become the lenses through which we view ourselves and our circumstances. Make no mistake, motherhood is hard. There is no sugarcoating it; motherhood can make a woman feel... broken. But whether it’s during the pains of pregnancy, the agony of labor, in the disappointments accompanying a body that will never look the same, or the sleep deprivation and emotional turmoil that follow us home from the hospital, we as Christians all too often focus on these things while making an obligatory mention of being “#blessed”, and resigning to offer it up, all while inwardly cursing Eve for her role in making it so. Dang. Hard. But what if we have it all wrong? What if that brokenness that we feel is part of God’s invitation into glory?
The Paradox of Brokenness
There is an old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery called Kintsukuroi. When a piece of ceramic breaks, it is not discarded, or even tucked away in the recesses of the cabinet only to be used if absolutely necessary. Instead, it is carefully repaired using a lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver or platinum.
This unique method celebrates each artifact's unique history by emphasizing its fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them. In fact, [Kintsukuroi] often makes the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original.1
What if that is what God has in mind? Our paradoxical God, who is three-in-one, divine, but human, who declares that the last will be first, and who uses the weak to confound the strong; how fitting would it be for Him to declare that as a result of our brokenness, we are even more beautiful? Not in spite of it, but because of it.
We see this in Christ’s passion. The gospel’s astounding beauty is not in spite of Jesus’ death, rather it’s precisely because of His sacrifice that glory can be seen. In the resurrection, Jesus’ wounds remained visible in His perfected and glorified body. They remain, not because he was unable to heal them, but because by those wounds, He healed us. (1 Peter 2:24) The wounds mark His glory.
Trading Deformity for Dignity
Jesus chose brokenness in order to give us eternal-life, something so profound, beautiful, and completely outside our ability to secure on our own. When we meditate on that truth, we cannot help but feel compelled to lay down our own lives for others, in one form or another, and we see the fruit of this so profoundly in motherhood. In joining our sacrifices to Christ’s, we experience an echo of this glory. Saint Augustine, in City of God, wrote, “Perhaps [in the Kingdom of God] we shall see on the bodies of the martyrs the traces of the wounds which they bore for Christ’s name: because it will not be a deformity, but a dignity in them; and a certain kind of beauty will shine in them.”
As women, made in the image of God and uniquely fashioned as co-creators with Him, we are invited to mirror the gospel message to the world. With deep love, we willingly and with joy allow our bodies to be broken, in order to bring about new life. When we view our motherly “brokenness” through this lens, the evidence of our wounds is no longer a deformity, but a dignity; a sign, not of loss, but of love.
Beautifully Broken
So I must choose to look back in that mirror, determined to see my brokenness for the beauty it reveals, looking forward to the day I can share this truth with my daughter as she inquisitively runs her little hand across my wounded stomach, and thanking Him that my life can be a small but resounding echo to my children of those words spoken thousands of years ago... “this is my body, broken for you.”
