"Yet She Will Be Saved Through Childbearing"

My soul was already saved... but He wasn't done yet.

Let’s look at a snapshot of my life before I became a mother. On second thought, let’s not. The truth is that the picture wouldn’t really reflect anything that bad. That’s because on the surface, I was doing quite well. I was a college graduate, a newlywed, a promising new hire in my exciting, fast-paced, upwardly mobile field of choice. I had a new car, a great apartment, a husband who thought I was everything, a favorite Mexican restaurant where the waiters knew what I meant when I said, “the usual.” That picture looks pretty good, doesn’t it?

What the static image couldn’t capture was what hid under the surface. A pedophile hid in plain sight on one side of my family, his secrets kept by the very people who should have been protecting young girls like me. My parents had what could at best be called a strained and tumultuous marriage that had circled the drain for much of my childhood, finally culminating in a messy divorce that took three years to finalize. Dad was a functional alcoholic whose affairs wore down my mother, an angry woman whose erratic swings in mood wouldn’t be diagnosed as bi-polar disorder until many years later, and although she never accepted the treatment that might have changed the trajectory of her own life, it was her children, I believe, who were most deeply marked by her illness. Early on, I’d clung to my grandparents for parental guidance, but that connection had been stretched paper thin when my mother forbid contact following her split with my father. My Mamaw’s careful Biblical foundation wasn’t forgotten, exactly— just pushed aside as I rushed headlong into whatever the world might have to offer. I spent the bulk of my later teenage years with the wrong people, following the wrong voices, and in the wrong places. All of this was invisible by the time I was 21, though. Invisible, yes… but very much present.

For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.—1 Timothy 2:13-15

Like Eve, I had a backstory. I had been deceived; I had become a transgressor. Although my circumstances were less than ideal, I had a counterbalancing foundation of truth I walked away from nearly the moment it was out of sight. I had worked hard to put my sins behind me. it wasn’t that hard, really; the world chalks such thing up to the idea of “enjoying” youth. Never mind the fact that my heart was still there, pacing like a caged lion. Waiting for my husband to cheat. Weighing whether the people I worked with were friends or competition. Looking for the next thing to give me an edge to make a name for myself.

And then, God chose to make me a mother. And yes, I was saved through childbearing.

Not saved in the sense of being given the gift of salvation. That had happened years before, though no fruit was evident up until this point. My soul had been bought with a price, but I’d yet to fully acknowledge that the act of redemption would truly transform me. God knew it would take the role of mother to accomplish that, and in His wisdom and mercy, He thrust me into it early.

For me the “saving” took the form of being radically redirected. I was yanked from the arc I had set myself on: the one centered on self, the one focused on goals I had set for my own glory. I was pulled from my selfish pursuits, dusted off, and set back down in a place where my vision of what mattered was so much clearer.

I was rescued. I don’t say that lightly, although I realize that unless we share the same worldview this sounds dramatic and unlikely. I had survived a traumatic childhood and made my way to the other side. From what could I— a woman on track to live out the American dream— have been rescued? Making too much money? Vacationing in Europe? Climbing a career ladder? Maybe not these things, exactly, but certainly from the reason I was pursuing them. And that, friends, was a stalwart belief that if I worked hard enough, I could control it all.

Do things to make my husband happy, and keep the marriage afloat.

Put in 12 hour days, and get the accolades at work.

Make the bigger paycheck, buy the bigger house.

Except, you know… I controlled none of it. And the pressure of thinking that I did was already beginning to wear thin. Childbearing saved be from a lifetime of striving. It rescued me from an illusion of control. It freed me from pursuing something without eternal value. It liberated me from feeding my own ego, which never would have satisfied.

I came to motherhood with a warped sense of who I was. I knew who I’d been. I understood that my story started with a brokenness that was had precious interludes that hinted at something else entirely. I knew I carried this with me, and I thought that it made me stronger somehow, that it built into me a resilience that I would need to shoulder through the things to come. But something peculiar happened when I realized that my heart was no longer simply pumping my own blood— I saw the bricks of my background redistributed, repurposed, and used to write something bigger than what I could have dreamed of on my own.

I suddenly understood my purpose. And no, it wasn’t just to be mother. It wasn’t just to be a wife. It wasn’t to be anything to anyone other than this:

To know, to love, and to serve God Himself.

The goals I had set for myself seemed vaporous when held against the backdrop of having a place in the story written by the creator of the universe. I realized, when I felt my baby kick against my ribs, that it didn’t matter if a million people knew my name: it would be forgotten before two generations had passed. I realized that whatever I accomplished in my career, or however many anniversaries I celebrated with my husband, it was impermanent. What would last was my soul. And unless I started acting like this was a truth worth living for, I was utterly missing the point.

It took childbearing to teach me that. It took being shown how little control I have even over the workings of my own body, how fragile our circumstances are, and how personal and intricate God’s handling of the events in our lives are to show me that God is God and I am not. It took pondering what holiness means, and asking the Holy Spirit to lead me to begin an intimate, daily walk with Jesus.

I needed childbearing. I needed to be reminded of my own smallness, and to wrap myself in humility. I needed to be given the gift of seeing pieces of myself and my husband in another human being. And I most certainly needed the refinement of living firsthand in the truth that God is present in every moment of every day, not divorced from our joys and sufferings, but holding us through them all.

There are a great many things we learn as we mature. This is true of our physical and emotional selves, and maybe most true of our spiritual selves. You have milestones along the way, ebenezers that spur you on. For me, a turning point was childbearing. It was there that God took that picture that looked so lovely to the outside world and began molding it into something that glorified Him. He used it to redeem the hurt and put it to use for those things He had planned all along.

What about you? Were you saved by childbearing? And if so, how?

In Christ,

Heather