Chapter Five: Guest Post by Kona Brown {and a link-up}

Hide and seek

I am reminded of the scene in a well-known chick flick, where the mom is on the phone with her best friend and baking cupcakes with her 2 toddler girls at the same time (I know you can just picture it!). She is piping icing and discussing the state of her marriage while clutching the phone between her shoulder and her ear, when her eldest becomes so frustrated that she dips her hands in the red food die and smacks two perfect, bright red hand prints on her mom’s bottom (which at the time was ensconced in a white as white can be vintage Dior pencil skirt, go figure! I mean isn’t that what YOU wear when you’re baking!). After a brief but intense outburst the mom locks herself in the pantry with much tears and frustration, only to be discovered hiding there by the nanny.

For a mom, there are no good hiding places. It can start to feel like nowhere is safe or sacred. Just when I think now is my chance to actually go to the loo by myself I hear my sons calling (yelling?) “Maaaaaaaaam” from the other side of the house. Sigh….no rest for the weary indeed. There is no escaping the brutal facts!

And isn’t that just what hiding is? Escaping. Checking out of your life for “just a minute” so you don’t have to face what is in your life? And don’t think of it just has “getting away” from home and from your kids. We hide from the realities of our lives in a myriad of ways, we seek relief and comfort and tell ourselves that if we could just escape for a little while we would be able to face it all again afterwards. Escaping into the bowl of ice cream or the glass of wine, the one we don’t need but our flesh just craves to make us feel better, to pacify us, to give us the illusion that we will be able to cope better afterwards. Escaping into the TV or escaping with some retail therapy (read: buying things we don’t really need with money we don’t really have!) .We also hide in our minds. We don’t utter the deep dark thoughts and fears that God wants us to face and deal with. We instead allow these to take over our thought life and influence our behavior as moms. Our hope for escape starts to occupy our minds and keeps us from being present in every moment of our family life. Hopefully SOME of this sounds familiar to you and I am not the only mom who sometimes imagines I have one of those cloaks that can make you disappear when you swish it around yourself.

God’s word speaks of a different hiding place in Col 3 v 3-4. In context this text reads: “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Col 3 v 2-5)

Hidden (krupto) is a verb meaning to keep something from being seen and thus to hide, conceal or cover. In some contexts krupto means to hide so as to keep secret, but in the present context refers to hiding so as to provide protection or safety and thus prevent one from being harmed by anything. That is the hiding place our Jesus offers, just because we have been born again into a different life with Him, and have put on the cloak of His blood and the robe of His righteousness to cover us. In his commentary on this passage, AB Simpson talks about a faith life that happens in an unseen realm, one that is hid from the world which cannot understand us. It is hid from the devil who cannot steal it. It is hid often from our own consciousness, and, when we think it gone and mourn our lack of feeling, we find that Christ is still there waiting till the eclipse is over to reveal Himself in unchanging love. The security of our life is not in our experience, but in Him.

There is a special hymn that this verse (and my general state of mad mommy-ness) makes me think of, by Annie Johnson Flint:

He giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater;
He sendeth more grace when the labours increase;
To added afflictions He addeth His mercy,
To multiplied trials His multiplied peace.

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done:
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.

His love has no limits, His grace has no measure,
His power has no boundary known unto men;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.

The writer of this hymn must’ve also been a mommy hiehie! Instead of telling you not to hide today Mom, I want to encourage you to rather hide not the way the world does, in meaningless pursuits and idolatrous places. There is a hiding place that offers constant refreshing as its source lies in the divine and not the carnal, which offers an identity that links us together with Christ, that is secure and cannot be taken from us. He will speak peace over us if our confidence is in Him and not in the ice cream. I trust in you Lord, for a week of to-do’s and to-be’s because Your Strength, Grace and Power is my hiding place.

About the author:

Kona Brown is a freelance writer and author of the mommy blog: The Unsinkable Mommy Brown (http://theunsinkablemommybrown.blogspot.com/). This 30-something mom of 2 boys is happily married to her best friend and resides in Johannesburg South Africa. A popular public speaker, Kona speaks and writes with candour and humour on a large variety of topics, including active citizenship and the future of South Africa, volunteerism, raising socially responsible kids, beauty with a purpose, wellness and other relevant topics that will inspire those with a heart for their country and its people. Kona is also reining Mrs UN International 2012/13 and Ambassador for Peace Starts, a local organisation promoting the International Day of Peace. Find her on Facebook: kona.brown or Twitter: KonaBrown

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Moms, as we continue on in our walk together here, we pray God will help us to find our hiding place in Him alone.  When we want to escape to another place or even into our own minds, to be different…let’s remember that Jesus, like not other, can make us feel different.

And now for our Friday Link-Up!

Here is your opportunity to tell YOUR story!  Will you share your heart and bless another mom?

• How do you  make time to retreat into the Word of God?
• Share with us some of your bible study habits.
• Do you see God’s Word as providing you with comfort? Why? Why not?

Please leave a link back to Hope For The Weary Mom somewhere in your post so other moms can find us here too. So, go ahead and link-up your blog posts and please feel free, as always, to share your heart in the comments below.

Week Five Links:

• Monday: Stacey’s video message
• Wednesday: Megan’s Post: When You Want to Run and Hide
• To see all of the posts for this study so far, you can view them here.