Missional Moms

Helen Lee has just published a book that looks worthwhile: The Missional Mom: Living with Purpose at Home and in the World. Ed Stetzer featured her in a blog post. Lee:

I wonder if the reason that today's Christian mothers experience life as being burdensome and unfulfilling is because they have misunderstood the purpose of their lives, and how motherhood fits into that purpose to begin with.

When I first became a mother nearly a decade ago, as much as I loved my newborn baby boy, I also wrestled with a constant stream of internal questions: was motherhood supposed to be my highest or only calling? What was I supposed to do with other gifts and callings God had given me? Was asking these kinds of questions evidence that I was a bad Christian mother? Was I instead supposed to be wholeheartedly embracing motherhood as the cornerstone of my identity and the recipient of all my energies?

For the past year and a half, I've been pondering these questions. I've specifically wondered whether pursuing a missional lifestyle could be the key to helping mothers regain a sense of perspective and purpose in their lives. I spoke with about 40 different mothers whose lives reflected a missional perspective, who lived with a strong sense of purpose and with the intentional desire to impact the world in whatever way God had called them. They were women who clearly took their roles as mothers and wives seriously, but they also kept those roles in the proper perspective, under God's lordship and direction for their lives.

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The more I began to interact with missional moms, the more I discovered that motherhood was not a phase in one's life that you had to just tolerate and survive. A missional mom is no less tired at the end of the day than other moms. But she goes to sleep knowing she has pursued God's mission for her life and made an impact in the world. And that is what makes all the difference.