Motherhood and Risky Faith

Motherhood, as you know, is a beautiful yet challenging adventure. Every day brings new surprises, and I’ve learned that it takes an extraordinary amount of faith to navigate this journey — especially when it comes to trusting God in the process.

There are days when I question whether I’m making the right decisions or doing enough to nurture my children’s growth. In those moments, I lean heavily on my faith.

This season has taught me that it’s okay not to have all the answers. I used to believe faith meant trusting that God would never let me fall — that He would keep me and my family from all harm. I don’t think I would have said it that directly, but underneath my prayers and fears, that belief was there.

But motherhood has reshaped my understanding of faith.

As someone with a background in early childhood development, I believe deeply in risky play. Science tells us that children need opportunities to take risks so they can learn resilience, confidence, and how to navigate adversity. When they’re little, this looks like letting them ride the scooter — fully equipped with helmets and pads — while every part of me braces for the inevitable fall. I don’t keep them from the scooter because they could get hurt. I allow them the space to discover their limits, risk injury, and simultaneously experience joy, freedom, and thrill.

As they grow older, the risks become far less physical and far more emotional and spiritual.

It means allowing them space to navigate their own relationship with Jesus. It means watching them work through conflict, disappointment, rejection, and heartache. It means admitting that I don’t have all the answers. It means preparing them for a purposeful life — and teaching them to “count the cost,” as we learn in the book of Luke.

This revelation has changed the way I parent.

The visceral desire to protect my babies can feel all-consuming. I want to shield them from injury, heartbreak, disappointment, and suffering. But I’ve realized I have a higher calling as their mother. My job is not simply to protect them — it is to disciple them.

It is to teach them how to count the cost of the life God calls us to live. It is to help them build confidence not only in their ability to navigate adversity, but in their willingness to turn to Jesus when life hurts. It is to show them that following Christ often requires risking comfort, stability, happiness, and sometimes even sanity for the sake of loving others well.

It is to teach them not to run from the suffering of this world, but to engage with it. To have proximity to people who know pain. To become people who bring light into hard places.

As N. T. Wright explains:

“God’s promise is not that earth is only a temporary residence point after which humans — or some of them — will end up leaving earth and going to heaven. God’s promise and purpose is for new heavens and new earth, for a new creation in which the lives of heaven and earth will be joined together in a great act of renewal once and for all. So the point is then to live at the moment as agents of the civilization of heaven here on earth.”

That perspective changes everything.

My role as their mother cannot simply be to keep them safe while they wait for heaven. It is to help equip them to become Christ’s agents here and now — people who reveal the Kingdom of God on earth through how they love, serve, create, and live.

It means teaching them that, as image bearers, we have the opportunity to bring beauty into this world through the lives we live and the things we create.

And truthfully, that changes not only the way I parent, but the way I live.

We are taking risks.

And we are trusting God.

Motherhood continues to be a journey of faith — one filled with moments of doubt, surrender, and immense joy. I am endlessly grateful for the friends who offer support and understanding along the way. But most of all, I am thankful for our Heavenly Father, who sees every struggle, knows every fear, and faithfully holds us through it all.