Across the developed world, mothers are getting older. Many women choose to delay having children so they can first lay a foundation of financial or relational security, or to pursue a career or personal goals. Other women never intended to be “older mothers,” but end up in that situation due to infertility, delayed marriage, or unexpected pregnancy.

I certainly never planned to have a baby later in life—I was too afraid of the risks. I knew that conceiving at an older age would increase my chance of miscarrying or experiencing complications during pregnancy and birth; I knew it would increase my baby’s chance of a congenital abnormality. I took it to heart when my mother once commented, “A woman’s body is designed to have children in her 20s.”

The way it worked out, I only just scraped into the “ideal” window for having children—starting at 28 and finishing (or so I thought) at 34. But this year, at age 39, I’m pregnant again and have come face-to-face with my fears.

In the early stages of my pregnancy, I expected things to go wrong; I didn’t even tell some of my closest friends I was pregnant until the second trimester. Now that the baby appears to be healthy and growing, I’ve discovered new things to worry about. I’ve lain awake at night calculating what age my husband and I will be (ancient!) when our baby finishes high school, gets married, or turns 40. I’ve caught myself looking enviously at younger pregnant women who seem to have much more energy (and far less gray hair!) than I do.

In the midst of my fears, I’m trying to recover a godly, balanced perspective. Here are three truths from Scripture that can encourage women like me who, whatever our intentions or ideals, find our medical records stamped with the words “geriatric mother.”

Update: A healthy baby boy joined our family in early September.

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Last time we saw that our children are our apprentices, following us as we follow Jesus to maturity in life and faith. Discipling children is about forming or shaping their heart, mind, goals, habits, character and behaviour into the likeness of Christ, who is the perfect image of God.

Disciple-making at home requires us to be both idealistic and realistic. Firstly, we do need to have ideals to strive for: we need to keep looking to God’s word and to the Word, Jesus, to remind ourselves of what kind of people we are aiming to be and raise.

But we also need to stay realistic, knowing that we and our children will regularly fall short of those ideals. Family discipleship must be built on a foundation of grace: 

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32)

Now let’s look in more detail at how parents can disciple our children.

I recently started working for Growing Faith—a Christian online magazine for parents. Read the rest of this article on their website here. Find out more about Growing Faith and subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter here.

Before he ascended to heaven, Jesus left his disciples with the Great Commission to ‘go and make disciples of all nations’ (Matthew 28:19). The early Christians prayed and worked to spread the gospel outwards to the ends of the known world; but they also took responsibility for passing the gospel downwards to the next generation.

But who exactly is responsible for this downward disciple-making—is it the church or the family? The Bible—in both Old and New Testaments—makes clear that it is parents who bear the primary responsibility for discipling their children. But in our modern world we don’t always live this out.

A recent report into the exodus of young people from our churches concluded: ‘The missing ingredient in the discipleship of children today appears to be the family. As a result the church has increasingly begun to operate as the primary means of spiritual development of youth and children, as parents have begun to relinquish or “outsource” that role.’

So what exactly is discipleship? What is our role as parents? And how can we go about it?

I recently started working for Growing Faith—a Christian online magazine for parents. Read the rest of this article on their website here. Find out more about Growing Faith and subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter here.

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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