I have learnt a great deal from the families in my church—and when I say families I don’t just mean parents and their young children. There’s Kath, in her forties, who brings her elderly grandfather to church. Kath’s twin sister, niece and uncle have also started coming to church regularly. Together with Kath’s immediate family, they now take up almost two rows.

Then there’s Ern and Fay, both over eighty, who always sit near the windows where the sun streams in. At first, I assumed they were a married couple; actually, they are brother and sister, both of them widowed. Finally, there’s Margaret. She’s an older single divorcee, but most weeks she’s accompanied by her teenage granddaughter.

The extended family groups in our church usually sit together, but there’s always room for one more. Kath is like an aunty to several of the young children in the congregation; Margaret’s granddaughter moves around, often sitting with one of the other families with teenage girls

Churches need natural families, because they can show the church how to be a family; but natural families also need the church—no family can or should be spiritually self-sufficient.

For this reason, churches should affirm natural families, but also encourage them to see themselves as part of the wider household of God, ready to embrace those members of the church who come alone.

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When you become a parent for the first time, it’s like stepping over the threshold from youth into adulthood: you finally get to see behind the curtain into the real world of “grown-ups”. No longer are you the one depending on others for guidance, care and support; for the first time, another person is completely dependent on you.

This sense of responsibility—the constant need to step up and be the adult—is a burden that parents always carry. When our kids are sick or afraid, we have to be strong and steady. When our kids have questions, we need to find the answers. When our kids face problems with their development, health or learning, we have to become their primary therapists, nurses, tutors and advocates.

And when Christmas and birthdays come around, we no longer get to experience the pure wonder of the celebration—we’re the ones who have to create the “magic” for the next generation.

When I first became a mother, I didn’t feel like a grown-up; I felt lost and helpless, like a little child. I felt completely inadequate for my new role: surely I wasn’t qualified to care for this tiny little human! In those early days, all I wanted was someone to mother me: I wanted someone older and wiser who could look after me and show me what to do. I craved time with my own mum and dad—their comforting presence, their practical care and their wisdom born of experience.

Eventually I did grow into my new role as a mother; eventually I did learn how to care for and teach our little boy with some measure of confidence. But even now, I continue to have moments, days or even whole weeks when I feel unqualified and inadequate as a mother.

More than anything else in life, parenthood makes us extremely aware of our human limitations.

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At some point, every couple will disagree about how they should be raising their children. This is a completely normal part of family life. But these disagreements bring out some of our strongest feelings—our deeply-held hopes and fears for our children, tangled up with our own childhood experiences—and so they can become particularly personal and emotional.

In our current situation, with many families spending more time together than usual, these disagreements are likely to surface more often. But if we can manage them in a constructive way, they can actually serve to strengthen our marriage and clarify our approach to parenting.

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At this particular moment in time, there seem to be endless, shapeless weeks of confinement stretching out before us, with little change on the horizon. We keep losing track of time, as one blank day on the calendar blends into the next.

The formlessness of these weeks is symptomatic of a broader problem of modern life: we have forgotten how to mark time. Our world no longer follows the kinds of patterns and rhythms that shaped the lives of our ancestors.

In our modern society, each day is more or less the same. Shops are open seven days a week; the internet is open for business twenty-four hours a day. We can buy the same fruit and vegetables in and out of season; we can set our air-conditioning to the same comfortable temperature all year round. Thanks to technology and globalisation, our lives are cushioned from the natural rhythms of the days, weeks, and seasons.

In our Christian lives, we have lost the beat that kept our spiritual ancestors moving in time. Most modern churches no longer follow the seasons of the church year with their pattern of set readings and liturgies. Apart from Christmas and Easter, every Sunday is more or less the same.

The main rhythms of our modern lives are set not by nature or the Church, but by our schools and our employers—they are the ones who schedule our days, weeks and months. But since their drumbeat has become muted, many of us are feeling lost and aimless.

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“In these extraordinary days, we have a unique opportunity to strengthen our families by taking up again the God-given responsibilities we have to one another. Parents can reclaim their role as their children’s primary teachers, and children can learn once again to work alongside their parents as their primary apprentices.

Let’s transform our homes from places of mere consumption and recreation into fruitful places of learning and productivity. May our homes be full of shared life, where childcare, education and work intertwine and overlap, and where the next generation can grow up to share in our great human vocation for the good of our world and our neighbours, to the glory of God.”

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“Because of the threat of COVID-19, families across the world are bringing their children’s education and their own work back into the home.

It’s tempting to see this situation purely negatively—as a terrible inconvenience to our daily lives. We have become accustomed to our homes, schools and workplaces staying in their separate spheres. But what if we take this opportunity to see things from a different angle? How could this moment in history help us to re-evaluate the way we live, work and raise our children? What could be the benefits to our families of learning and working at home together?

I strongly believe that bringing education and work back into the home can help us to live out our God-given calling as families. This series of articles will begin by focusing on two parts of this calling: parents as teachers and children as apprentices.”

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A few months ago I asked God what I should do with my time once our youngest son starts school next year (Read about it here). Inspired by the legacy of my grandmothers’ generation, I wanted to pursue my God-given vocation rather than just a job. I wanted to find work that would honour, rather than compete with my role as a mother—as a “worker” who is not interchangeable, but already entwined in a web of relationships with particular people in a particular place. I collected stories from other mothers who had done this by: working in family businesses, working in their church or their children’s school, working from home, monetising their work in the home or “working” as a volunteer.

One “job” that God called me to do fell into that last category: I agreed to take over the running of a lunchtime Christian group at our older sons’ school while our youngest went to preschool for an extra day.

Recent weeks have thrown a couple of “spanners” into the works, which have prompted me to reflect a little more on the work of mothers. I have been forced to find ways of better integrating work and motherhood so that it’s a case of both/and, not either/or. I have come to appreciate that the work of mothers is best described as “polychronic”—that is, achieving multiple goals at the same time. [1]

Since writing this article, life has thrown all of us another major “spanner” into the works, in the form of a global pandemic. This has forced us to integrate our roles as parents and workers in a different way. I plan to write more about that in a number of future articles.

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Unlike many women, I did not have an identity crisis when I became a mother. That’s probably because I didn’t really have a career to identify with in the first place. I had tallied up seven years of tertiary study and worked a few part-time jobs; but I certainly didn’t experience any grief at having to stop work when our first son was born.

I spent the next ten years of life with my centre of gravity at home. We welcomed a second son and then a third into our family: I was busy caring for babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers on repeat.

But this year, our youngest son will be getting ready to start school; it will be my final year of having children at home during the week. Now I can feel an identity crisis looming. What will I do once our littlest one goes to school?

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