By Libbo Crosswhite
Miraculous Motherhood
I can vividly remember sitting at summer camp back in college during a question and answer session with the camp director and the question was posed, “If God is real, then why don’t we have the same type of miracles and stories that we read in the Bible. Why did the miracles just stop?” It was the first time I realized that a large source of my creeping doubt in my faith was because I felt the same way. “Do miracles really still happen?” The question kept me from fully allowing the supremacy of Christ to dwell in my life.
The fact of the matter is that I witness miracles all around me. The very notion of motherhood is perhaps one of life’s greatest and most apparent miracles. My oldest, Mary Thomas, will turn five in a few weeks and up until her birth, I had never had a possession that didn’t get lost or broken within the first year of me owning it. Unlike every cell phone and pair of sunglasses that I have ever had in my possession, I have yet to leave and/or break Mary (yet) — a true miracle. By the grace of God, I graduated from Mississippi College this summer with my masters in education — and let me just tell you, the only word to describe the entire experience is miracle. I had to correct so many people when they would say things like “Wow, I don’t know how you do it all; you go to school with two kids and have a full time job.” My answer was always the same; “Oh, it’s because I don’t do it all.”
I did none of it alone. What I did during the last three years of graduate school was garner an addiction to white chocolate mochas. Sure, I wrote the papers and attended class, but God did the real work. He gave me the gift of a supportive husband who was willing to be a single parent three nights a week and He provided friends who would step in when I couldn’t be there and teachers that were understanding when Russell went weeks without diapers and I forgot to brush Mary’s hair. My graduate school experience was the burning bush that Moses experienced — a true proclamation of God’s power.
And I hope to not just speak of miracles that I have experienced, but boldly proclaim that God is both the author and creator of miracles yet to come in my own life and other’s lives as well. I will daringly declare the miracle of Russell one day — maybe before he heads to college — sleeping in his bed for an entire night. God, you are the author of impossibilities!
But in all seriousness, to the mother who is finally pregnant after a painful loss or the broken relationship that has been made whole through the Power of the Gospel, miracles abound around us. We must only look and be confident in their existence just as we are confident in the power of the Holy Spirit to change us from the inside out. The church in Acts points to the fact that many of the first believers had seen with their own eyes the death, resurrection, and outright POWER of Jesus and therefore had a fervent desire to spread the Christian faith to those who had not seen Him with their own eyes. And though none of us today have that luxury to have witnessed the man of Jesus on earth, we have witnessed His power in so many ways in our lives.
And in all reality, it is our salvation story that is a miracle in itself. That the God who created every single thing on this earth, including you and me, would show us immeasurable grace by sending his Son to die a death He didn’t deserve so that we could not only receive eternal life, but that we could experience transformation here on earth. We once were lost, and now we are found. And in return, I have been challenged with the fact that I am raising two little sinners that I hope and pray continue to learn about the God of redemption and power.
Our responsibility as parents isn’t to model perfection, but rather share our God stories and the miracles around us with our children. May we share our God story with each other shamelessly, and with the next generation passionately. May we continue the tradition we see so clearly in Acts of what it looks like to be a collection of people who know that at the very core of everything they are, Jesus is at the center of their identity as individuals and as a community:
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people“ Acts 2:42-47.
Libbo Haskins Crosswhite and her husband, Clay, live in Brandon and attend Pinelake. They have one daughter, Mary Thomas, who is 4 years old and a son, Russell, who is 2 1/2 years old. She is the high school guidance counselor at Madison-Ridgeland Academy and can be emailed at lcrosswhite@mrapats.org.
