Do you ever feel like a moon more than a mama?
You revolve around your children, doing your best to establish order and maintain the status-quo. You make chore charts and schedule activities keep your daily rhythms in orbit. The never-ending clutter in your home feels like an ocean of stuff, and its all you can do just to shift the tide in and out.
What if God had a different design for motherhood?
A Little Context:
For the New Year, I began a Bible reading plan that starts in Genesis 1. These first pages share how our God created the world, and announced commands to his creation along the way. The command to multiply, bear fruit, and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28) is one that humanity shares with other creatures, including plants (verse 11) and animals (verses 22 & 24).
All of this is familiar territory. But this time I noticed that on day 4, God gives a unique command to the solar system: to rule over the day and night. And on day 6, God gives a similar command to humans: to have dominion over the earth and its creatures.
My curiosity sparked—what if my lunar system is actually Biblical? Eagerly, I researched the similarities between the commands (blueletterbible is the best).
Hebrew Origins:
Turns out, the commands are nothing alike. For the sun, moon, and stars, God’s command to “rule” is the Hebrew “mashal”. It is a command to keep order in the environment.
God simply expects the moon to do its job: revolve around the world, sweeping up the ocean tides, regulating sleep cycles, and illuminating the dark. The moon is not enabled to connect with the night. It is not empowered to gain a reciprocal sustenance or pleasure from the portion it rules over. The moon is purely task-oriented.
On the other hand, God’s command for humanity is the Hebrew word “radah”. The phrase “have dominion” is about meeting the environment, not just maintaining it. It is connection-oriented.
The calling implies a deep, relational responsibility, not just a functional one. Mankind gets to be stewards and cultivators. As co-creators with the Lord, we must help provide order, absolutely. But more importantly, we invest in and develop our portion.
4 Frustrations:
God’s commands for moons and humans are clearly different. And the results are different too. God’s commands for humanity are designed to give us fulfillment. But when you get the commands mixed up, you get frustrated:
- Exhaustion: When you try to rule your world like the moon rules the night, you realize the job is never done. The moon does not set—it follows the night to the other side of the world, over and over again.
- Fuzzy Priorities: By nature, a moon is a slave to gravity: whatever has the greatest gravitation pull. One moment you’re making pirouettes around the Lord, reading your Bible and worshipping with complete abandon! The next, you are hovering around your phone waiting for the chime of the world’s affirmation.
- Lack of Fulfillment: my friend is a perfectionist. She said, “I’m really good at being a ‘moon’. But even when I check off all my task-boxes, at the end of the day, I am lonely and I feel like a stranger to my kids.”
- Shame: you are never enough. You’re left floating in the dark of condemnation.
It’s always the trend when you try to follow expectations made for something or someone else. We need to rethink our focus.
We Need to Rethink Our Focus:
What would happen if we shifted our expectations from “maintaining order” to “cultivating connection”?
Instead of working on my laptop while my toddler ate lunch, could I stay present with the meal? Relish in her giggles as she offers me fistfuls of her spaghetti. Lock eyes with her gorgeous blue saucers when she bumps her sippy cup against mine for “cheers!”.
Instead of racing through a ten-second tidy, could I take time to train my son about responsibility with a cheerful attitude? Could we crank up the tunes, sing and dance our way through the clean up job? Creating a memory could be more important than cleaning the mess.
And when my pre-teen daughter offers to read through her journal with me at night, what would it take for me to ignore my go-to response “I am too too tired”? It will require intentionality earlier in the day, for sure. I will have to stop revolving around the relentless demands of my to-do list, which is what wears me out in the first place.
It is Time to Stay Present
The mandate for mamas is not to stay accountable, it is to stay present.
You are called to have a relational responsibility—with the Lord first and then the portion He has given you—your home, your marriage, your children, and other kingdom assignments for His glory.
Staying present empowers you to trade frantic disenchantment for restful fulfillment. There is always promise when you lean into who God created you to be.
You were never meant to be a moon. You were made to be a mother:
- A cultivator and connector.
- A developer and disciple-maker.
- A woman who sees and plant seeds and pull up seats to the table of the Lord.
And it is going to be a blast! You have one rad responsibility: to exercise Radah dominion over your portion.
When you do so the way God intended, you can say as the Lord did at the very beginning: “it is good.”
Stay Present Questions:
How would walking with Jesus instead of revolve around the kids change my day?
How can I meet my kids, not just maintain them?
What does it look like to cultivate growth and creative connection in my mothering?
What is one task-oriented thing I could reimagine as a relationally-oriented one?
Want more?
Read: I found this article helpful in unpacking the difference between “Mashal” and “Radah”.
Move: join me in this Moving Meditation to help unlock creative connection ideas.
Listen: this episode of Stay Present Mama is all about managing expectations! Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Sing: “I Need Thee Every Hour” keeps me staying present as a mama not a moon. This version by Chelsie Moon (*wink*) is a favorite.