"Push Through Exhaustion": A Pharisee's Gospel

An Open Response to "5 Reasons to Keep Going to Church with Baby Brain” on The Gospel Coalition

I recently read the 2019 article “5 Reasons to Keep Going to Church with Baby Brain” by Susan Rockwell after it was reposted on The Gospel Coalition’s Instagram account last week. Several of my readers had forwarded me the article, asking, “What do you think of this?”

After reading it several times, I spent a long time thinking and praying about why I, and those who sent it to me, felt hurt and misunderstood by the tone of the article. While I appreciated the author’s commitment to the principle of regular church attendance and her efforts to convey empathy by sharing her own story of sleepless nights and nursery-averse kids, the article as a whole seemed to lack grace for some of the most vulnerable members in our church families. 

I am not writing to argue that church is unimportant. I agree that going to church faithfully is one way to establish a family culture that prioritizes God. And corporate worship, even when we’re not able to sit through an entire sermon, can be a way to commune with God at the end of another exhausting week. I can acknowledge that through waves of online church and the ups and downs of Covid, church attendance has taken a hit. I’m guessing that this week’s reposting of Rockwell’s 2019 message was aimed at those who haven’t made the transition back to in-person church and are considering giving up completely.

But in reading the messages I received as well as the many comments on the Gospel Coalition’s post, it became clear to me that exhausted young mothers who find their family’s church attendance spotty in their current season felt crushed by the rigidity of this article when they are already being stretched so thin. It is for them that I felt compelled to write this response. 

The crux of the fault I find in this article stems from the author’s implication that church attendance “no matter what”  is next to Godliness.

In contrast, Jesus came to earth to abolish these pharisaical checklist tendencies in which we are prone to find a false sense of security. 

Soul + Body 

The thing is, I was that pharisee. Just a decade ago, I might have been the one writing this 5-point article about the importance of church attendance, no matter the cost. I too was an exhausted mother who birthed 3 babies in 4 years, who didn’t sleep through the night for months on end. I also had separation-averse kids who never took to a bottle, so most Sunday mornings involved nursing a baby mid-service. I had grown up going to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night; I certainly was raised to respect the importance of gathering with a body of local believers. So when my kids were little, I did what Rockwell advised. I “pushed through exhaustion” and showed up every Sunday. Until I physically couldn’t.

My own perfectionistic tendencies in life and my refusal to listen to the signals my body was sending me served as my downfall. When my youngest was 2, I ended up so sick that I couldn’t really get out of bed for a month and couldn’t really eat for about 10 weeks. During that time, though my spirit wanted to say yes to the call to keep the Sabbath holy, my body was shouting no. 

Many of us grew up learning that the word soul conveys the idea of a floating spirit, untethered to the realities of this world, the only part of us that will live on into eternity.

But the Hebrew word for soul (nephesh) describes an embodied spirit, one contained in a living, breathing body. And our bodies are frail.

While the article laser-focuses on the concept of “Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together,” (Hebrews 10:25),  it seems to ignore larger themes in the Bible that speak to our very human bodies. God created the Sabbath as a day of rest, and Jesus confirmed that the Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). We can see God’s care for our frail frames in his response to Elijah, meeting him in a whisper instead of a roar, then offering his weary servant a nap and a snack (I Kings 19). So to publish and promote an article that values church attendance above our very basic need for rest is to ignore a Biblical theme that is laced throughout the entirety of the Bible, not to mention how it downplays the incredible hardship it is on our bodies it is when we are living through a season of sustained exhaustion from children waking in the night.

God gave us our bodies on purpose. Rockwell empathizes with the mother waking with a knot in her stomach each Sunday morning, but then encourages her readers to “push through the exhaustion.” This admonishment made me teary as I consider what a shame it is that we as women have been taught not to trust our bodies.

Perhaps the exhausted mother waking with a knot in her stomach each Sunday morning is experiencing the Holy Spirit trying to get her attention through her nervous system. Perhaps this prompting is an alarm to be attended to rather than something akin to “laziness” to push through. 

My heart goes out to Rockwell and any mother reading the article who believe that this kind of “you’ll be fine” mentality comes from Jesus. The idea that we can and should push beyond our body’s capabilities does not come from Scripture but from the western culture all around us.

“No matter how hard it is, keep going,” as Rockwell writes, sounds nothing like the kingdom Jesus came to establish, one which invites all who are weary in order that they may rest.

What concerns me further is that this article is indicative of a wider capital-C Church posture towards those who are weak or vulnerable.

Isaiah 40:11 paints a picture of a Shepherd who “gently leads those who are with young.” This verse does not describe a God who is standing at the church doorway, attendance clipboard in hand, wondering where on earth those backsliding ewes are. Here we read of a God who is right beside those  ewes as they are up in the middle of the night, giving birth or nursing their babes. Here we see a God who understands the unique challenges of seasons of parenting young children. The entire chapter of Isaiah 40 speaks to a God who is incomprehensibly bigger than we can imagine, who has measured oceans and mountains, and yet the chapter opens with what words?
Comfort for God’s people, spoken tenderly by a loving God. 

Let me be clear: communing with the people of God is absolutely important. Uniting ourselves with a local group of believers is vital. But in the most intense seasons of motherhood, this practice does not have to look like a perfect Sunday morning attendance record. It may look like a missed week or three here and there in spite of our commitment to going each Sunday. But this type of sometimes spotty attendance, is not, as Rockwell implies, a dangerous and sure-fire way to lose our faith. 

Perhaps instead we can marry the command to “not forsake the assembling of ourselves together” with “for everything there is a season” in order to come to a better understanding of what church attendance might look like in the most intense seasons of motherhood.

In light of that, I’d like to offer you 5 grace-filled ideas that I wish someone had shared with me when my children were younger: 

#1 - Recognizing & Honoring Your Exhaustion Is Not Just For Yourself 

The author asks, “What message am I giving them [my children] if I stay home?” I would counter by asking, ““What message am I giving to my children if I continually ignore my body’s signals of exhaustion?”

I would argue that teaching our children, by example, to be aware of their own God-given bodies and to respect their bodies’ needs is equally if not more valuable than putting our heads down and powering through. If to be Christian is to be counter-cultural, what is more counter-cultural than to choose rest and stillness within a culture that prioritizes hustle and overproduction? The Bible does not include Jesus’ temple attendance record, but it does include many references to Jesus’ slipping away to the “lonely” places. Jesus understood the very human experience of burnout, and I believe his tendency to withdraw speaks volumes to the posture of grace we can take on when we are advising young parents about church attendance. 

#2 - Church Is About More Than What Happens Inside Church Walls

Rockwell argues that weary mothers should take heart even if they are unable to listen to a full sermon, which I went years without doing as I nursed bottle-averse babies. While I agree that fellowship and singing can lift the spirit, can we not recognize that in intense seasons of exhaustion, there is a particular kind of ministry that can happen among believing mothers as they sip lukewarm coffee on a park bench together on a Wednesday morning while their toddlers run and play and intermittently ask for snacks?

While we should certainly make a concerted effort to worship with our local body of believers, for the weeks we choose to lean on grace and choose rest, can we not trust God to minister to us in other ways throughout the week? Instead of placing all of our eggs in the Sunday morning basket, we should encourage exhausted mothers that God sees them, like Hagar, in their exhaustion and desperation. Can we not encourage them to be gentle with themselves as God is with them, instead of turning their faith into a checklist they cannot physically keep up with? Can we not come to the exhausted mother as her local body, bring her a meal, watch her kids, run a load of laundry and extend Church into her living room? 

#3 - The Church Should Encourage Exhausted Mothers 

One of the most damaging ideas in this article is that Rockwell lists among the top-five reasons that exhausted mothers should show up in church is to encourage others. My heart breaks for mothers being taught this. Instead, the church should be a refuge for the weary and burdened. Throughout Scripture, God compels his people to take care of the widow, orphan, refugee…in other words, the most vulnerable among us. I would argue that a postpartum mother, or an exhausted mother who is swimming in young kids, can be counted among the vulnerable.

Instead of asking her to come so she can make sure she’s not discouraging her local body, the church should be flocking to these young mothers, seeking them out rather than implying that an exhausted mother’s dragging her exhausted kid to church every single week somehow encourages the body and honors God. Young parents are called, first and foremost, to shepherd their own children, not to concern themselves primarily with how their church attendance might make a pastor or other congregants feel. 

#4 - Those Who Sometimes Stay Home Don’t Always Stop Coming Forever

Reasoning #4 of Rockwell’s article contains a healthy dose of fear-mongering. Can a habit of skipping church form? Sure. Is Satan looking for opportunities to throw us off the path like a crouching lion? Yes. But does God want us gritting our teeth and bearing the exhaustion just so we can show up at church every week out of fear? Absolutely not. This kind of thinking conveys a boogeyman aspect to our faith: do this or else! It reeks of the misguided idea that “God helps those who help themselves,” and sounds a lot like the Pharisees who “tie[d] up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders” (Matthew 23:4). 

 If “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof,” (Psalm 24:1), I believe that we can encourage mothers that connection with God during intense seasons of child-rearing can happen outside the walls of a church some weeks.

Does a mother not grow in her understanding of “this is my body, broken for you,” when her own body is ripped open in childbirth? Does a mother not relate deeply to the God who never slumbers in His care for us when she is up multiple times in a night?

When the article tells mothers to “How easy it is to slowly drift from the Father who longs to holds you close,” it is not only underestimating how mothers bear the very image of God in their day-to-day of changing diapers like Jesus washing feet, but is also underestimating God’s ability to hold mothers close, even if their church attendance isn’t perfect. Here is where we need to rely on the Biblical idea that there is, indeed, a season for everything. Just because a person’s church attendance is intermittent for a season, it in no way implies that they are walking away from their faith. Rather than shaming women who aren’t making it each Sunday, we should seek them out and ask how we can help. 

#5 - Some Church IS Better Than No Church

At Reason #5, I agree with the author on the language of “Some Church is Better than No Church,” but I take it to mean something else entirely when viewed through the lens of a God who is gentle to those with young. I am not here to argue that exhausted parents should abandon ship entirely. I am not here to argue that being part of and participating in a local body of believers shouldn’t be a priority. But I am here to echo the author’s own words: “this is a stage” to encourage exhausted mothers that perfect church attendance need not be a priority in some seasons.

Gentleness is a fruit of the spirit. Rigidity is not. 

Mothers, this may not be a season where you make it to church every week. And that’s okay. This may be a season where you and your children are trading endless cold and flu germs, and the best you can manage  for a few weeks is watch the sermon online while they watch a Veggie Tales or two. And that’s okay. God sees your heart and cares far more that you come to Him with your exhaustion and overwhelm than He cares if you are sitting in a pew every Sunday. He cares more that you come to Him for your every need than He does that you get everyone inside the church door after a sweaty morning of yelling and crying, from both you and your kids. More than anything, let’s praise God for Jesus, who came to this earth and walked among us, who is indeed our Great High Priest who can relate with our every hardship. Let us praise God that He is gentle with us. 

It bears repeating: God gently leads those with young. 

While agreeing with the author that a habit of family church attendance is important, I wish her approach had been more nuanced and grace-filled. Would Jesus have scolded the mother with postpartum depression or anxiety for not showing up in church “no matter what”? Should we be prioritizing church attendance above all else for the mother whose pregnancy or birth was traumatic, either physically or emotionally? What about the ones whose nipples are still bleeding months after birth or who have children with ongoing health problems? What about the nursing mothers who are more afraid of nursing in a church context that hypersexualizes breasts than they are at the local playground? The human, bodily experience of mothers is incredibly wide and diverse, and this article conveys little empathy for mothers enduring a season of hardship.

To conclude, I thought I would edit the author’s own closing paragraph (the italicized words are my additions):

Sisters, God holds you close. He longs for a relationship with you and has sent his Son to prove it to you; you do not have to earn His love through a perfect church attendance record. It is by GRACE you have been saved (Ephesians 2:8). So hold on to him let Him hold on to you through the tiredness. Keep him and his people your little ones a priority by acknowledging God in your everyday, not just Sunday mornings. Draw strength from the church he’s given you. Let others know you’re tired by not sometimes not showing up on Sunday morning during certain seasons. God will strengthen you, uplift you, and grow you as you press into his people Him. No matter how hard it is, keep going. Come to Him, weary and burdened Mama, and He will give you rest. Draw near to him, and he will draw near to you.