My Cup Overflows: Experiencing God's Comfort in Motherhood's Valleys Намуна

“for you are with me” - Psalm 23:4

One winter when I was growing up, my family went to Colorado for a ski trip. My dad hired a ski instructor to come with us for a day, much to my dismay. I already knew how to ski perfectly fine, I thought, and I didn’t need someone else telling me what to do. I spent much of the morning ambivalent to the instructor and charting my own path. That is, until the instructor brought us to an incredibly steep ski run covered with precarious moguls. For that run, I kept my eyes locked on the instructor as I closely followed in her path.

Much like my experience with the difficult ski run, it is often challenging circumstances that force us to turn our attention to God. In Psalm 23, the Psalmist David has spoken about God in third person, but his tone changes when he gets to “the valley of the shadow of death.” Here, David begins talking to God directly. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me,” he says in verse 4.

God is always with us, but it’s often suffering that moves us to an awareness of his presence. The difficulties of motherhood have the potential to serve as a gift, opening our eyes to our need for God. In all the fears we might possess as moms - for our kids’ health and wellbeing, our own emotional wellbeing, the state of our marriage, our social life or our career - in all our fear of the unknown future, we have one thing we can hold onto for certain: the truth that God is and will be with us. As Jesus declares in Matthew 28:20, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Our God is the Shepherd who is with us. God doesn’t stand by our side as an onlooker, rather, he enters into our suffering with us. He knows the temptations, fears, rejection, loneliness and pain of loss. Isaiah 53:4 says of Jesus, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” There is nothing we might face that is too much for Jesus, for he has already felt the weight of all of sin and death on the cross.

Today, may your fears be the ignition that draw you to look at Christ. In doing so, let your heart be reminded that the road ahead may not be easy, but there is nothing you will have to face alone.