Photo by Kevin Dooley

By Joy Wong

I’m currently a full-time stay-at-home mom with a 4-year-old, 2-year-old, and another baby on the way. Most days I’m barely getting through the day, just trying to keep everyone fed, clothed, and my toddler diapered. If I can keep everyone bathed, that’s a bonus.

Because of this, my vocational goals in recent years involving ordination and getting certified as a spiritual director have been shelved — which I’m ok with. I’ve marked these years as a season in my life, one that I have chosen for myself. I consider having kids, in spite of its myriad of challenges, as a great joy, privilege, and blessing.

However, these days, I find that I struggle the most at church.

I realize that it’s from a feeling of being benched, or left out. I struggle with hearing about service opportunities or needs of the church, but feeling completely taxed and unable to participate in any way. I watch the leaders of the church on stage and think to myself, I used to lead like that. That was a long time ago; will I ever be back again? I go through service as a participant only, and sometimes not even that, often being called out in the middle to tend to my crying toddler.

There are people who have tried, in vain, to include me. I was asked to be on an HR team to review staff members of the church, but the kids’ schedules made it so that I, who’s usually quite conscientious, forgot about an important meeting, and then found myself unable to attend the others scheduled. People ask how I’m doing and try to make conversation with me, but the life of a full-time stay-at-home mom doesn’t leave me much mental capacity or subject material to converse on. Though I lead a joyful life, I don’t have much to talk about. In the past, that wouldn’t have mattered either, because I was sought out as a really good listener. That certainly doesn’t exist anymore either. It would be like asking a mother bird to listen over the din of her baby birds’ constant chirping; not much can be heard, or said, in satisfaction.

I can’t help but think, however, that my feelings at church of being left out is quite different from the reality. I imagine many people feel left out of the life of the church — the sick, those in prison, those enslaved, those who simply can’t get to a church, those who out of necessity must work on Sundays, those who are taxed beyond exhaustion in trying to survive, etc. And yet, in truth, we all belong to the body of Christ.

I struggle with the belief that if I am not leading and using my gifts to serve the church in the traditional ways, that I am useless and invisible. Occasionally, people will affirm that I am serving the Lord by raising my kids in this season, but somehow it’s hard to remember that. In the context of the church service, it still feels like it doesn’t count.

I recognize that perhaps my challenge in this season is to know that I am enough in Christ; to know that my belonging doesn’t depend on what I give, but on my identity in Christ. In the past, as a hospital chaplain intern, one of the most meaningful things to me was that simply by walking into a patient’s room and announcing myself as a chaplain was enough to remind the sick, those who often felt forgotten by God, that they were seen and remembered by God. Perhaps this season of my faith journey is meant to help me minister, later on, to those who feel forgotten, excluded, and unseen.

Though it often feels that I’m peering at others from a lonely corner, in truth, I belong too. I am seen, and I matter too. I hope, in future, to affirm moms of young children, and others who are on the outer circles, in the same way.

Joy Wong has an MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary, a BA in English from Princeton University, as well as four years’ experience in industrial distribution management.  She is a contributing author to Mirrored Reflections: Reframing Biblical Characters, published in September 2010.