Finding God in the Life I Actually Live

Motherhood disoriented me from my faith.

I don’t know if pastors are supposed to admit that out loud, but it’s true.

For the first four years of motherhood, I worked for God while often feeling like I couldn’t find Him for myself.

Before kids, I imagined my spiritual life looking a certain way.

Long uninterrupted mornings with hot coffee and an open Bible.
Thirty quiet minutes reading Scripture while my future children played peacefully nearby.
Slow, meaningful prayer.
Deep revelations from the Lord before 7 am.

Instead, most mornings looked more like:

“Can I have a snack?”
“That’s my toy!”
A toddler crying because someone looked at them wrong.
Me rereading the same verse four times because I couldn’t focus long enough to understand what I was reading.

When the Old Rhythms Stopped Working

The old rhythms no longer fit the life I was living.

That pattern created shame because I thought it meant I was failing spiritually.

I was searching for holy moments in a life I longed to curate instead of the one I was actually living.

Spiritual Performance vs. Intimacy

Looking back now, I can see something more clearly:

I had confused spiritual performance with intimacy.

I thought the goal was maintaining the perfect rhythms.

But the rhythms were never the point.

Intimacy was.

And once I began understanding that, something shifted.

Not overnight.
And definitely not perfectly.

But slowly, I started looking for God in the life I actually had instead of mourning the one I imagined.

A lot of that shift began with Practicing the Way by John Mark Comer.

Early in the book, he talks about the place many believers eventually find themselves in where the things that once formed them no longer seem to be making them more like Christ.

You feel stagnant.
Maybe even like you’re regressing.

I remember reading that and immediately feeling relief because I finally had language for what I had been experiencing.

Not a lack of love for God.

But a disconnect between the life I was living and the spiritual expectations I carried.

Starting Smaller

Over the last year and a half, I’ve started approaching spiritual practices differently.

Not as a performance.
Not as another list to accomplish.
But as a way to cultivate awareness of God in the middle of ordinary life.

And maybe this sounds counterintuitive, adding more to my “to-do list. But starting smaller actually brought more intimacy than striving harder ever did.

Five minutes of silence and solitude.
Listening to a prayer app while putting on makeup.
One podcast a week from a pastor or spiritual leader I trust.
Sneaking away with my Bible into the bathroom because I’ve reached the end of myself and need a moment with Jesus before I lose my patience again.

Formation in the Interruptions

I used to think spiritual formation happened primarily in disciplined, uninterrupted moments.

Now I think it is happening more in interruptions of the mundane.

Before kids, I thought a lot about the kind of mother I would become.

Present.
Patient.
Always creating meaningful moments.
The kind of mom who gently disciples her children throughout the day while never sounding frustrated.

But the version of myself I found instead was often overwhelmed.
Impatient.
Quick to anger.
Exhausted by the constant demands and noise.

And strangely enough, some of the holiest moments in this season have not come from the “good mom moments.”

They’ve come from the moments where I completely fall apart.

The moments where I snapped at my child for asking me a question while I was overwhelmed.

The moments where I acted just as immature as my four-year-old.

The moments where I walked away carrying shame because I knew I could have handled things differently.

The God of My Weak Moments

That’s where I’m finding God lately.

Not absent from my weakness.
Present in it.

I have read the verse for years about God’s power being made perfect in weakness.

But if I’m honest, I think I subconsciously believed God was closest to me in my polished moments.

When I was disciplined.
Patient.
Peaceful.
Spiritually impressive.

Not in the moments where I was unraveling.

But motherhood has stripped away so much of my ability to curate an image of competency before God.

And maybe that has been part of the formation too.

Presence Instead of Performance

Lately, I keep asking:

God, what are You doing now?

Not later when life is going according to plan.
Not tomorrow when I finally wake up early enough to spend time in the Word in a quiet house at 5am.
Not when life becomes less interrupted.

Now.

What are You doing in this moment while I clean up another toddler spill?

What are You forming in me while I tuck my child back into bed for the fifth time?

What are You teaching me in the moments where I cannot possibly be everything everyone needs from me?

I think what God is cultivating in me right now is presence.

Not the version social media sells where we grit our teeth and spend six uninterrupted hours playing magnatiles while secretly feeling anxious the whole time.

A deeper kind of presence.

An awareness of God in ordinary life.

An openness to let interruptions become formation instead of seeing them only as obstacles to the “real” spiritual life.

When Beauty Turns Into Control

One of my core values is beauty.

I love creating a warm home.
I love thoughtful design.
I love getting dressed in a way that feels classic and pulled together.
I love beauty in nature, in art, in good meals around crowded tables, in the eyes of my babies.

But I’m also learning that curating can turn into control very quickly.

Control over how my home feels.
How I’m perceived.
How motherhood looks.
How spirituality appears from the outside.

And I think that’s part of why this season has been so disorienting.

Motherhood keeps confronting me with my limitations.

It keeps reminding me that I cannot force transformation through perfectly curated rhythms.

I can only remain open to God in the middle of the life I’ve been given.

The Life I Actually Live

More and more, I’m beginning to believe that ordinary life really can become what some writers call a “thin space.”

A place where heaven and earth overlap.

Not because the moment itself is impressive.

But because God is there.

In the dishes.
In bedtime routines.
In answering another email.
In apologizing to my children.
In staying awake ten extra minutes to connect with my husband when I would rather collapse into bed.

I spent a lot of years looking for God in the life I imagined I would live.

And slowly, He is teaching me to find Him in the one I actually do.