How to find peace in the "Mother-Load"

Reflecting back on my early years of motherhood, I’m transported back to a time when I felt like I allowed myself to become buried by the mundane tasks of life. These tiny people had arrived and although I adored them, at times I felt overcome by how much it required of me to care for them. It all felt like too much to try and balance everything, and I feared what I might lose. Sadly, my tendency was to rush through the day to get to the next task so that I could focus on my “real work.” I had no idea how to just be in the moment, to be present and most importantly, how to be a child myself. I also had no idea that I was missing out on the most important work of my life!

I began to sit in what I called, “the secret place” which was pretty much the farm table in my kitchen, and Lord began to show me that I was His daughter first and that I could parent beautifully from that place. It was there that I discovered the glorious in the mundane. I found that God was with me at the kitchen sink and next to me in the minivan. I learned to be loved and seen by Him, far away from the crowds and the platform. I discovered that my true identity was being His beloved and that I could live from that place instead of constantly striving for it.

I’m thankful as I look back on how the Lord exposed the posture of my heart in that season and gently led me to a place of sweet surrender. He showed me that everything that I had…My ministry, my talents and most certainly my children were ALL a gift from Him, my perfect Father. As I began to see it all as a gift rather than the “mother-load” that I turned it into, my heart was able to surrender it all in a new way. This gratitude and surrender, though, would require me to give my whole heart to Jesus – to trust Him in ways I never had.

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Being a worship leader and artist, The Holy Spirit began to show me that if I would put Him first in my life, and then care for my family about my ministry and my career, that He would do “God-sized” things in my life. He has been so faithful! He showed me over and over that being His beloved was the complete source of my joy and the posture in which I could truly live life to the fullest. As I allowed myself to be held, and I mean all of me…All of my fears, my anxieties, my secret longings…I began to understand how to hold my own. As I let His truth sing over me, I began to sing over the people in my life in a new way. Like a mother bird perched over her nest, I sang from a place of rest and protection. I recently released an album called Be Held, Lullabies For The Beloved, a collection of songs that were just little seedlings in my heart back when my children were babies. My children, now 17, 14 and 10, have become the beneficiaries of God turning my world upside down in the sweetest way.

These songs are now in full bloom and are pulled from the very promises of God’s Word. The heart behind this record is that none of us ever outgrow the need to be held, to be sung over and to come before our Heavenly Father as His child. We also never outgrow the posture of sweet surrender! My prayer is that we will sing these songs over our loved ones - but in the same breath, find that our Heavenly father is singing them over us. Because when we learn to live from our beloved-ness, we become people of peace.

Christy Nockels

Christy Nockels is a wife, mother, singer, poet, songwriter and podcast host. She has long had a huge appreciation for music and it’s role it plays in the kingdom of God. As a worship leader for many years, she has been an integral part of Passion Conferences. A pastor’s kid, who was born in Fort Worth and raised in Oklahoma, she’s seen first hand music sweep people into the presence of God in a powerful way.