This Mama’s Wrecked Heart Belongs First to Her Family…

In the new book by Jeff Goins, Wrecked, he writes,

“It’s about embracing the journey

of being brokenhearted for a broken world

and allowing it to shape you.”

Motherhood has shaped me.

In my youth I was snatched out of darkness, rescued by a God Whose love so amazing, captured my heart. I willingly surrendered it, making it His. As a newly reborn, single teenage mama, I knelt at the altar more times than I can count, laying my life down as a living sacrifice.

And while sitting in pews with my heart bleeding open, I listened the stories the missionaries would tell. Stories of how dogs ate better in our country than in the depressed country that held his heart. Stories that would leave me undone, heart-wrecked, and I would cry out from the deepest parts of me, “God to take me to the nations. I offer all of me, even if it means sleeping in a hut on a dirt floor.”

I listened to the preachers and the pastors and the missionaries. They said if I gave it all to God — God would use me. He would do something great with my life. I believed them. I surrendered my life, pleading for the fire of God to consume all of me.

Less of me, more of You.

My life as an offering.

Let Galations 2:20 become a reality in me.

Just before I left my teens, I got married to a most wonderful man who embraced both my daughter and I. We stepped down as youth leaders to help handout food at the pantry for the homeless. Then the church closed the pantry. In the rear view mirror of my car, one rainy night, I watched the silhouettes of the homeless walk away hungry, and I cried out to God,

“I want to feed your people!”

As newlyweds, 15 years ago, Husband and I went to Haiti on a missions trip. There, we trudged through dumps the Haitians called home. We help build a church in the middle of one. They needed a Bible small enough to seal in the concrete wall, and my much loved pocket one was offered. Haiti holds my Bible, and Haiti holds part of my heart.

Then Husband and I began a Sidewalk Sunday school outreach in our city — R.O.C.K — Reaching Our Community Kids. We fell in love with those kids. Then I became pregnant, and he did it without me. Eventually, he stopped too.

Laundry grew. More babies came. I decided to withdraw from college and become a stay-at-home mama. I answered the call to homeschool. Motherhood did not come easy, and home felt like a prison, and I — a slave.

“Those preachers, they lied to me,” I thought.

I spent years believing the falsehood from the enemy, that my labor as a stay-at-home-mama had no significance. I thought so much of my time was squandered away housekeeping, doing seemingly mundane time-wasting tasks that had no value. I found myself more than once, curled up on the floor, soul shroud in darkness, crying out to God, “I feel like such a waste. There has got to be more than this!”

Seeing my life as a blank canvas, shelved and forgotten, I spent years looking out the window for something better, past the beautiful eyes of innocence staring back at me. Weighted down by my own oppressive feelings of worthlessness and uselessness for the Kingdom, I didn’t get it. Not until I learned my heart must be broken — first for them.

My heart cannot be undone for the lost world and undo my family and leave them lost.  Along the journey of learning how to embrace the call of motherhood, my mama’s heart has been wrecked for my family.

Pastors would preach, “Just do something!”

I’d feel the judgement pressing down on me and those words crippled me. I’d silently scream back, “I want to.  I desperately want to! But my heart is arrested, seized and in the custody of a Holy God and He’s not done with it yet. It’s not time. He says my work is at home.” 

This little world of mine, my home, is where I am first called to work in God’s Kingdom. There is courage in going and there is courage in staying. Saying NO to my own desires, however noble they may seem, meant saying YES to the only treasures I will take with me to heaven. Every step I take away from my family would be a step away from God’s purpose for me. 

God did a work down deep in my heart to anchor my soul and establish me in my first calling, as wife and mama. He ignited in me a passion to stand on my knees for my family in the face of the enemy, and against the darkness in this world.

We  stand as gatekeepers to our children’s hearts, and a watchmen over their souls. <— Tweetable, eh?

Parents, we have a high calling. Our roll is mentor to our children. We are to raise Godly seed, followers of Christ, leaders for their generation and generations to come. We are to impart what God has given us, into them. We have the divine privilege of helping them be established in their identity in Christ, so they will live out their God given purpose . 

The devil cannot steal our purpose,

but he endeavors to keep us disillusioned about it. 

God ignited a passion in me to raise kids, not to serve the world, but to change it. Now I get it. I am not going anywhere without them. It’s all of us, for them — the least of these, and the devil fights it. He wants to extinguish the flame. It’s our destiny in God the devil fears. He doesn’t want Godly children to be raised knowing their heritage in the Lord — knowing the inheritance that is theirs as a child of God.

The preachers were right. I offer what is in my hands, and in the hands of a big God, even the smallest of offerings He can make something great. I can’t do everything, but I can do something.

The broken world we see all around is tattered because of torn-apart homes and torn-apart families. God had to wrecked my heart for my family first, not to tear me apart from them, but to bind us together. So this is what the devil fights so hard to destroy. A house divided cannot stand. Love is the perfect bond of unity. Faith works by love.

When this family is walking in agreement, awakened to the world He loves, brokenhearted for those His heart beats for, then we are a force that cannot be reckoned with. We have a promise that when two come in agreement we shall have what we ask. There are six of us.

Now, I do not see just a blank canvas, but I am beginning to see the outline of the sketch and a glimpse of the color palette. It’s more beautiful than any colors I have ever dreamed of. The Master Artist knows the big picture plan of my life. The souls He has entrusted to me here at home, interwoven in breathtaking beauty in the masterpiece He is slowly revealing to me. I see the nations on the horizon of the landscape, and Husband, the children and I reaching far to feed His people.

I have new hope rising in my wrecked heart — that God would not just call me, but us.

I get it now.

Lord, break all of our hearts for the those You were broken for.

Together, we will answer the call.

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About Michele-Lyn | Twitter | Facebook | Subscribe
When I was 16 and pregnant, Jesus rescued me. Since then, I have lived for Him. When I stumble, I fall into a net called GRACE. At A Life Surrendered, I hope to bring encouragement when I share my stories — both trials and triumphs — of living out my days as a wife and homeschooling mama of 4, in pursuit of God. 
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