At one point in my life, my husband and I hauled around four children under four. Wet wipes wallpapered my days, and I habitually tripped over board books with soggy corners, sippy cups with chewed-up lids, and plastic versions of Noah’s ark—admittedly, an interesting narrative for a children’s toy. My dishwasher and washing machine essentially ran for six straight years, bless their overworked, underpaid souls.
During those years, I recall from one of our overstuffed canvas library bags a startling picture book. In it, the author portrayed a young mother unappreciated by her family. Until the end of the book, when her sons learned gratitude, the woman was illustrated as simply…faceless. Her featureless face glided from one page to the next as she toiled at task after task. Was I swallowing tears? Because there I was, shunting kids to playdates, zoo trips, doctor visits. Creating craft projects, cleaning up after craft projects, dumping kids covered in craft projects into the tub. At some point, I realized if I died, my children would likely not remember my voice, my fingers tucking the blanket beneath their smooth chins, my lap rocking them during a fever, our hands pressing Play-doh into vibrant, inedible bakery goods. (They might not remember my bursts of exhausted mom-anger either—but I did want credit for the Play-doh. Cleaning that stuff up is a nightmare.)
The work to credit ratio in parenting is a tad disproportionate. I wasn’t magically “seen” when they reached the age to place gluey macaroni art in my hands, their fingers stroking my curls. And I wasn’t magically seen when my kids tumbled into the churn of the teen years. In fact, when children are of age to empathize, yet cannot witness how their choices essentially dissect your aorta—this feels far worse than a toddler unable to appreciate he yet again is the beneficiary of clean pants.
Yet all this trouble is worth it because even when our kids don’t see, God sees.
Never Faceless
For any of us, God beholds what is done and who is served in secret without fanfare (Matt 6:3-4). (To be sure, he is so often the one serving me in secret, without fanfare.) Psalm 139:1-3 asserts that he knows every time we parents sit down or get up—all those times we stumble into a child’s room that first year, feeding and swaying and patting and creeping away: “for darkness is as light with you” (Ps 139:12). He is acquainted with all our ways, including the wrestling on the floor, the carpooling, the permission slips, the soccer coaching in the backyard, the prickly sweat when our kids ask about sex. We’re promised that “whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward” (Matt 10:42)—which surely applies to grape juice and Gatorade.
And I believe God prepares unthinkable rewards for parents. In Luke 14:14—and in so many other Scriptures speaking of those who help the powerless—he praises those who serve people who can’t pay them back, “for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” He “give[s] every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds” (Jer 17:10). Your conversations on the way to lacrosse practice, or scrubbing throw-up out of the floor? Those are witnessed and cherished by the Holy One. And I believe he will faithfully, overwhelmingly reward.
Imitating the Ultimate Father
My parenthood, in its own crooked, horsey, macaroni-art way, has borne witness to his. After all, God is the ultimate Father. In Isaiah 46:3-4, he describes Israel as “borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb.” Deuteronomy elaborates that God carried Israel in the wilderness as a father carries his child (Deut 1:31). He exists as the first, and only perfect, parent.
He schools my heart to be the parent who runs toward both the rebel and the self-righteous (Luke 15). He teaches me to both acknowledge and sacrifice limits of my time, my energy, my resources, my body (Rom 12:1-3). He shows me how to dwell among, not above, my children (John 1:14). He reminds me that kindness leads them toward repentance (Rom 2:4); that I welcome my children, as they are, just as he welcomes me (Rom 15:7).
Human beings showed up in a world we did not create and rebelled against Love Himself. Yet he feeds us, carries us, cleans us, clothes us, sings to us, kisses our wounds, gives us gifts, explores the planet with us, grows us up. And though “No one has ever seen God”—the Unseen One—“if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us” (1 John 4:12).
So I would tenderly smile at the beleaguered parent in me, or you, and remind her that what we do for our children illuminates God to the world. Because parenting plays the gospel on repeat: that when we could do nothing for God—and actually made things far worse—he did everything for us. God is the Father my children (and I) need most.
The Witness
In my head, I turn over God’s El Roi witness to my parenthood—the God Who Sees (Gen 16:13). I imagine him breathing upon the moments even I have not seen, like cells multiplying in my womb unawares, or for you adoptive or foster parents, in a womb elsewhere in the world while perhaps you watched Netflix or phoned your boss: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb” (Ps 139:13)—in ways indeed reverent and awesome (Ps 139:14).
God has identified countless unseen viruses entering or leaving my child’s body; perhaps he sometimes helped them fortuitously wash their hands at some point when I was off wiping…everything. His hands installed the extra rib in my son’s neck, which would lead to that six-week cancer scare when he turned 13. He beheld my kids at summer camp while I enjoyed a little less utter chaos reigning at home; watched over my daughter as she was bullied at school; and even now, bunks with my oldest during his deployment. For “If I…dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me” (Ps 139:9-10).
Yet he has also stood with me, silently or no, in moments exultant and catastrophic, for “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!” (Ps 139:7-9). He remembers with me the blue of my son’s eyes when he and I looked at each other the first time, recalls with me his singing his first song (“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”). He held my kids close to his heart when they watched their dogs walk away with a new owner before we left Africa. He’ll hold my hand in the future—the hopefully distant future—when I get the call that one of them will make me a grandparent.
His whisper has fallen over me when I am disciplining, or fishing poop out of the bathtub, or finishing the dishes after bedtime, the day’s finish line so close I can taste it. He’s witnessed and convicted my children in times when darkness was as light to him (Ps 139:12). He has borne witness to my spectacular top ten parenting crash-and-burns and my snag-a-tissue highlight reel.
With El Roi, we are never truly faceless.
In your hidden parenting, may you know you are truly seen. For, far better than you will ever behold yourself, God sees you and your children. Far more than merely witnessing our lives like any other parent, for the Everlasting Father to see is also to lovingly, relentlessly act.
Janel Breitenstein is a writer and speaker, and author of Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write on Your Kids’ Hearts (Harvest House, 2021). She and her husband work on behalf of the poor with Engineering Ministries International. You may sample her work at www.janelbreitenstein.com. Stay tuned for her second book, coming soon.