Britt Williams here, this is for all the mums out there.
It’s so easy to spend our time wishing for someone else’s life, isn’t it? It’s so easy to compare ourselves to other mums who we assume just ‘have it together’. It’s so easy to put our hope in some future day when ‘X finally happens and I finally feel complete’. It’s so easy to buy into our culture’s obsession with optimisation – even to the point of optimising our children!
It’s so easy to lack contentment. So easy.
So where does contentment in your family come from? Do we even have contentment in our families? Questions like those often make me question and doubt myself. It recently clicked for me that the cure for discontent – is the contentment that God alone offers us.
Contentment in our families, did you know, is linked to the command not to covet – family contentment is one of the 10 commands so it must be important! We spend so much time coveting instead of being thankful for the gifts God has given us. Our families are ours, given to us by God, wonderful even in the brokenness and limitations being in this sinful world.
I myself have been encouraged and rebuked recently to slow down to find rest and gratitude in what God has given me today. I need to slow down and absorb these short days on earth and use these days with purpose and meaning. Mums, let’s pray that God will use us for his glory and that we will focus on serving him rather than looking for ways to make ourselves feel better or more comfortable or more important. God alone offers the contentment that sin falsely promises.
May God bless you with true contentment,
Britt Williams.
ps. Last week, myself and the other PWAC staff-wives (Kate and Ineke) trekked it into Sydney to hear about “Joy in Contentment” at the annual Mother’s Union Conference. This article was heavily inspired by a talk about “Contentment in our Families”.
