By Joy Wong

As this month’s blog theme is “denial,” I looked up references to the word in the Bible. There aren’t too many. But this famous verse popped up: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me'” (Matthew 16:24 NIV).

Immediately after reading the verse, I felt guilt. How in the world have I been denying myself lately? I’ve only been occupied with taking care of my kids at home during this pandemic. I haven’t been serving anyone in need, helping the church, doing ministry of any kind. I haven’t even been very good at building a faith foundation for my kids. Out of the three, only one of them takes an interest in online church, and the other two just play legos and UNO during the service time (not only do I let them, but dare I say — often I play with them!).

Even the election has me confused on this front. I come from a conservative evangelical upbringing, but my beliefs and leanings have evolved quite a bit. I’ll admit I felt relieved at Biden’s victory, but I thought to myself, How does “denying myself” to follow Jesus look like in this election? While my convictions may lead me to support Biden, thousands of other believers — including those from the church I grew up in, and where the foundation of my faith was built — believe their way of self-denial and discipleship is to support Trump. Which one is it??

I’ve concluded that perhaps the answer is “neither.” And also that my self-perception that I am not sacrificing enough is warped and inaccurate, as I found and pondered these verses:

“But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God… Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (I Timothy 5:4, 8 NIV).

I have always had trouble reconciling my life as a stay-at-home mom with my idea of what it means to be a Christ follower. Becoming a mom has made my participation in church community increasingly difficult. In addition, although the practice of being a mom requires an enormous amount of self-denial, because the welfare of my children seems intimately tied to my own welfare, thus my care for them feels selfish, as if I am caring for my own needs by caring for them.

However, clearly in these I Timothy verses, putting our faith into practice is directly related to taking care of our family. How did I miss this in all my years of being a Christian? Or rather, why had I never made this connection before — that being a follower of Christ could translate to simply taking care of my family?

It’ll still take a while for me to fully grasp this. Even as I’m typing these new revelations, I still have a thought in the back of my mind that I am falling short in many ways; that it’s those families in full-time ministry or missions who are truly denying themselves, or that there are a million things I could be doing that I am not, which would constitute a full denial of myself. But even as I wrestle, at least now there is another part of my mind that, although in some disbelief, is considering this new idea: that perhaps all the cooking, cleaning, diapering, laundering, dish-washing, hair-brushing, homework-helping, tantrum-soothing — and the myriad of other tasks that occupy me as a parent — is a legitimate way of discipleship and that it can be my way of denying myself, taking up my cross, and following Christ.

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.