"The Maxim of Motherhood" #1

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly!”

As I’ve reflected on my own mother’s life (we call her Mama-B), and pondered my wife’s writing “The Miracle of Motherhood”; their loving service and struggles become more and more significant. I’ve always said that if my wife never did another thing other than birth our children, she has still eclipsed me. However, she’s done much more…taking on the most demanding and influential work known to this planet, and doing it with courage and compassion. I am forever grateful to my mother and wife, and mankind is eternally indebted to Mom’s. Because of this, I am passing on some insights I’ve gleaned from G.K. Chesterton’s most poignant quotes pertaining to motherhood.

In 1910, Chesterton wrote one of his most famous and most misunderstood (and misapplied) lines, “A thing worth doing is worth doing badly!”…he said that the woman –she understands something men don’t, and by using this principle, she was maintaining the prime truth of woman, the universal mother. “The point he is trying to make is that an amateur does something because they love to do it, not necessarily because they are the best at doing it. The professional may be better, but is doing it for money, not for love” (D.Ahlquist). This means that all women enter this vocation of “Motherhood” with little or no training…just heart and soul…love and emotion.

Secondarily, “the larger point is that the rise of the specialist coincides with the demise of democracy and the family…our civilization has justly decided that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men…… the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary people –marriage, mothering, jury decisions, making laws or disciples…when we wish anything done which is really serious, we collect ordinary people…the same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.” We should not trust a specialist or professional with the most fundamental human endeavors like family, faith or politics…we should not entrust the raising of our children to day-care specialists or PHD-professionals. It simply takes a marriage and a “Mother.”

Tacitus said, “The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.” It is certainly true that fear with its oppressive insecurities and obsession with inadequacy is a familiar and formidable foe. However, far more damaging I believe, is the hindrance from the resulting “perfectionism” that is so prevalent today. The greatest tyranny is the lie of lack that masks our fear and unbelief, and promotes procrastination in the name of “preparation and doing it right.” In reality, it is control based on fear and built on humanistic lies of performance orientation and worldly measures of success.

To be a “Mother”, follow Christ by faith, or pioneer anything (church-plants, starting your own business), at some point you must throw caution to the wind, and “launch forth” into the deep unknown. When Chesterton says, “A thing worth doing is worth doing badly”, he is proclaiming the woman, wife and mother that acts “by faith expressed and energized by love” is a supernatural force for goodness and godliness that defies “earthly, sensual and devilish wisdom.” Two of my favorite Bible verses support this. 2Cor.8:12 “If there is first a willing mind, it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what one does not have!” And from the Message translation -Eccl. 11:4 “If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get anything done!”

As a church planter, I have grown to understand, identify with and deeply respect these truths and the vocation of Motherhood with its exemplary faith. With this, as in all faith there is an element of risk, and it is here where the “Mother” shines the brightest as she places what ever she has (loaves of ability and availability, fishes of hopes and dreams) in the hands of her Lord, and trusts Him to supply what’s lacking and do the miraculous. This “Maxim of Motherhood” is a key to discipleship, and the most powerful and overlooked principle of birthing and building anything. Moms teach us to use what we have, and say, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give to you –in the name of Jesus!”