The Sweetest Mother's Day Gift!

When you’re slammed with negativity, anxiety and big emotions that consume you . . .

When your heart is broken and you don’t know how to cope, so you turn to things that will temporarily distract you, even though you know you’ll end up feeling worse afterwards . . .

When your house is as big of a disaster as your mind feels, and you can’t seem to find any order . . .

When a loved one is sick and you are drowning in fear . . .

When you’re doubting God’s goodness because if He was good, how could all of this be happening . . .

When your marriage is falling apart and you don’t know if there is any hope . . .

When you lose your temper, again, after promising yourself you wouldn’t . . .

When you feel like you’ve missed the mark, and question your worth . . .

These are the messy moments of life. The ones that feel like they could wreck you, or that they might bury you alive.

It’s during these times we have to stop and remember that God meets us here. Right in the mess.

He accepts us in the mess.
He loves us in the mess.
He wants us in the mess.

With Jesus, it’s not an “until you . . .” type of relationship. He isn’t saying:
“Until you get your act together, then I will accept you.”
“Until you fix your relationships, then I will love you.”
“Until you are better, then I will want you.”

No, He meets us in the mess. And His feelings for us do not fluctuate and are not changing. He meets us in the mess.

But He doesn’t leave us there. It’s typically not our first reaction to run to God when we are struggling, but it can be.

And if we give Him the mess, He knows how to redeem it. It might not be in the way we want Him to.

But it could be even better.

It’s in the mess that we need Him the most, and He is more than willing to meet us.

Use the messy moments as an invitation to really experience His love and grace.

Let the Redeemer do the redeeming.

This article originally appeared on The Unraveling

 

You may also like:

God is in the Midst of Messy Motherhood

An Open Letter to the Heartbroken

To the Christian “Bad Girl” Who Wonders if She Belongs

Want more stories of love, family, and faith from the heart of every home, delivered straight to you? Sign up here!

 

 

So God Made a Grandmother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Order Now!

Kelli Bachara

Kelli Bachara is a wife and mom to two sweet kiddos. She is a mental health therapist, writer, and podcaster. Kelli loves her Goldendoodle, coffee, and this beautiful thing called life. You can find her at www.kellibachara.com.

Your Worth Is Not Someone Else’s To Measure

In: Faith, Living
Woman looking over canyon

Insecurity is something we all carry in one form or another. For me, it has probably always looked confident and outgoing from the outside. But internally, it can feel heavy, complicated, and exhausting at times. And when someone comes along whose behavior reinforces those insecurities, it amplifies what was already there. There was someone I had hoped to genuinely connect with, but it was clear from the start that the feeling wasn’t mutual. From the beginning, their wall was up. No matter how kind I tried to be or how carefully I showed up, it never came down. Their distance...

Keep Reading

Lord, Give Me Faith Like Hannah

In: Faith
Woman walking in field with hand in wheat

Hannah knew what it was like to feel forgotten. She often clutched her empty womb and thought Surely the Lord has forgotten me.  She knew the bitter sting of feeling isolated and alone. She knew the anguish of praying day after day after day and seeing no fruit, not even a bud, from her faithfulness. Hannah knew what it was like to feel like the weight of the world was on her, and her hope may have dwindled. Even those around her did not offer encouragement. Quite the opposite—they did their best to sow seeds of discouragement. Yet Hannah pressed...

Keep Reading

God Carries Me Through the Deep Waters of Change

In: Faith, Living, Motherhood
Woman at the beach as waves come in

“Ahhh!” My underwater scream garbled in my snorkel tube as the manta ray’s cavernous mouth swept a hand’s distance from my face. My fingers tightened around the surfboard until my knuckles ached. My arms trembled. I jerked my head side to side, searching for my daughters, Mia and Megan. Recent college graduates, they had joined me on one last mother-daughter vacation before launching their adult lives. They floated easily on the vibrant Hawaiian water, relaxed, trusting. I wanted to borrow their calm. Earlier, our guide had explained that the LED lights built into the surfboard attracted plankton the way college...

Keep Reading

Faith After a Rare Disease Diagnosis

In: Faith, Motherhood
Family smiling in posed photo

My pastor frequently speaks of “kid pain” and acknowledges there’s nothing like it. I can testify to that. After nine months of uncertainty and unexplained issues following the birth of our now 4-year-old daughter, Harlow, we finally received her diagnosis of Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Complex Deficiency (PDCD), a life-limiting mitochondrial disease with no cure and no FDA-approved treatments. It was heartbreaking. In moments like these, a parent can fall into complete desperation. You go through a range of emotions almost too fast to name: fear for your child’s life; anxiousness about how much time you’ll get with them; overwhelming grief. And...

Keep Reading

What If I Don’t Hear God’s Voice?

In: Faith
Woman with folded hands looking up

There have been many times over the years when I’ve heard others share stories of how the Lord spoke to them or gave them a sign. Seashells scattered along a sandy beach, numbered to represent how many children they would have. A quiet walk in the park, followed by a clear sense that another little one was coming. What a blessing, I think, when I hear and read their stories. I often wonder how much more faith they must have than I do—to know with such certainty that what they heard was truly God speaking. I listen, I smile, and...

Keep Reading

God Holds You As You Hold Everyone Else

In: Faith, Motherhood
Mother holding toddler daughter on her hip, standing outside

She stands in the kitchen, hands trembling over the sink, tears she cannot let fall pressing behind her eyes. The world outside her window is quiet, but inside her heart there is a storm she cannot name. She is hurting, not because she does not love her life, but because somewhere along the way she forgot how to breathe inside it. Yet even in her pain, little voices call her name. Tiny hands tug at her shirt. Lunchboxes need packing, homework needs checking, hearts need holding. And so she wipes her face, forces a smile, and whispers a quiet prayer:...

Keep Reading

Yes, I Know Fear—but I Also Know Faith

In: Faith, Motherhood
Mother holding child's hands in hospital bed

The night my daughter woke up screaming at 3 a.m., I knew something was wrong. Her cry wasn’t the half-asleep whimper of a bad dream. Instead, it was pain—raw and sharp. Within an hour, we were rushing to the emergency room, the world outside our headlights still wrapped in darkness. Tests, scans, questions, and then the words no parent ever wants to hear: “We’re transferring her to another hospital by ambulance. She needs surgery right away.” They said “torsion.” They said “tumor.” They said “appendix.” I nodded, because that’s what mothers do. We stay steady, even when our hearts are...

Keep Reading

10 Years after My Mother’s Death, Her Faith Still Guides Me

In: Faith, Grief
Woman praying

Growing up, I was a reluctant Catholic. My mother would drag us to church, and I’d go through the motions—fingers moving across rosary beads without really feeling the prayers. But she never stopped. Sunday Mass, daily prayers, devotions to the Blessed Mother. She was relentless in her faith, not because she was trying to force it on us, but because she genuinely believed we would need it someday. She was right. My mother died of stage 4 colon cancer in 2012. My brother and I watched her suffer, saw how her body betrayed her, watched as treatments failed. And here’s...

Keep Reading

Finding God in the Middle of Disbelief: A Mom’s Journey through Faith and Fear

In: Faith
Mother holding hand of young child, silhouette

“But the Lord is with me like a mighty warrior; so my persecutors will stumble and not triumph over me.” – Jeremiah 20:11 God, thank You for making sure my son is okay. Thank You for this just being paranoia. I believe in You. I believe in Your control. I believe. I believe. I believe. These words streamed through my head as my husband drove us downtown to visit our first specialist with our 4-month-old son, Maximus. Our pediatrician had written me off, but I could not ignore the feeling in my bones that something was wrong. Tiny, hard bumps...

Keep Reading

In Praise of Indebtedness: How Threads of Reciprocity Weave Us Together

In: Faith, Living
Woman holding casserole

It all started with tomatoes. After we moved, a neighbor invited us to pick from the abundance in her and her husband’s gardens. In return for a pile of tomatoes gathered from their raised beds, I left a plastic bag of homegrown pumpkins on their porch. Later that summer, our neighbor stopped by with a recycled container full of still more fruits. By the fall, we were sharing chili and cookies over dinner at our place. Threads of indebtedness were weaving us together. For most of my life, the idea of indebtedness has tasted rather repulsive on my tongue. The...

Keep Reading