Julia Roller talks about how her son changed how she looked at her faith
An interview with Julia Roller,
author of Mom
Seeks God
Part 1 of 2
Q: How did
the birth of your first son change your perspective on God and your spiritual
life?
Today I would say that motherhood
has brought me closer to God, that the love you feel for your child is such a
concrete reminder of the love God has for us, but I didn’t feel that way in
those first few weeks and months of motherhood.
Before I had Ben, I truly thought of
myself as a pretty good person. Sure, I knew I needed forgiveness for numerous
little sins, but when it came to the big things, I thought I had things fairly
well-covered. Ha! Then I had a wonderful, beautiful little baby and he never
slept and he wasn’t gaining weight. I couldn’t seem to do anything right, and I
felt so alone and so depressed. I came face-to-face with my own sinfulness and
selfishness in a way I never had before, yet I no longer felt like I had access
to those ways of meeting God that had come so easily in my pre-motherhood life.
I didn’t react to this challenge the way I would have hoped, either, with
patience and calm and bringing it all to God. Instead I couldn’t think about
anything more than getting things back to the way they had been, and then I
felt a continual sense of shame about feeling that way. I felt far from God. I
felt unworthy, and I didn’t seem to know how to get back in touch with God.
I knew I had to change something, so
I embarked on this journey of trying to figure out how to meet God in my new
life as a mother.
Q: Was there
one particular mothering moment that made you realize your spiritual
relationship with God was suffering?
Four weeks after I had Ben we
realized he wasn’t gaining weight; he was actually dropping weight. I still
have trouble looking at pictures of him from that time; his little face was
just skeletal. I started on a difficult and time-consuming nursing and pumping
regimen. What I remember most from that time period was sitting on the couch
trying to pump while Ben sat in his swing or infant seat and just wailed
because I wasn’t holding him. Most of the time, we wailed together. I was so
exhausted and felt like such a failure for not even being able to feed my own
baby. We had just moved to a new town the year before, and I didn’t know any
other moms, plus my husband was working long hours. I felt so alone, and there
didn’t seem to be any end in sight. I felt so ashamed of these feelings that I
didn’t feel like I could bring them before God. As a result, I started to grow
more and more disconnected from God.
That was a terribly dark period for
me, and it came to an end, thankfully. I realized a lot of my depression had
been connected to a medicine I’d been prescribed to increase my milk supply.
But I’d already begun this pattern of not coming before God with my immediate
concerns, and I found, sadly, that it’s easy to get out of the habit of prayer.
A year and a half or so later, when I was writing a daily devotional about
spiritual practices, I started to realize how few spiritual practices I had
left in my life. I didn’t have any consistent time of prayer, I was no longer
in a Bible study group, and I certainly wasn’t studying the Bible on my own. I
wanted to have a relationship with God that my son could emulate, and I just
didn’t.
Q: What
makes your book different from the other books out there offering encouragement
for women overwhelmed with the busyness of family and motherhood?
I love to read other women’s
stories. I find so much hope in knowing I’m not alone in my struggles. This is
my story, but what I hope this book also provides are some helpful, practical
steps to connect with God even when you feel as though you have no more time or
energy to do so. One of the things my book offers is a framework based on
spiritual disciplines. I’d been writing about the spiritual disciplines for
years by the time I had a child. So I had a lot of “head knowledge” about why I
should be engaging in these practices, but with the life-changes necessitated
by motherhood, I was really struggling to incorporate these practices into my
life.
Each chapter of the book describes
my effort to practice one spiritual discipline in particular: prayer, study and
service are a few examples. And I’ve summarized what I learned about each at
the end of the chapters in what I call in the book “non-expert tips,” because I
felt as though I was starting at the beginning again with trying to fit these spiritual
practices in my new life as a mom of a small child. So I think it’s very easy
to read the book one discipline at a time, and it makes it easy to read with a
group too.
Q: You have
worked with Richard J. Foster who is best known for his book Celebration of Discipline, and his
ministry. How did practicing those same disciplines he talks about prepare you
for motherhood?
You know, I tried so hard to prepare
myself for motherhood, but I don’t think anything can quite get you ready for
it! And that’s true in both challenging and rewarding ways. But yes, Richard’s
books, mainly Celebration and Prayer, had changed my life, and I had
been trying to practice spiritual disciplines for some time before having a
baby. Initially that made things harder because I couldn’t practice them in the
same way after becoming a mom — I didn’t seem to have time for prayer and
study, and silence was just a fantasy.
Eventually, I began to see
motherhood itself as a spiritual discipline, and this idea helped me enormously:
to see motherhood as a role designed by God, one teaching me about God and
helping me to become more like Jesus. That made so much sense to me.
Q: For those
in the audience who may not be familiar with what you mean by “spiritual
disciplines,” please share what they are and how they apply to our Christian
walk.
Spiritual disciplines are just those
practices Jesus showed us to help us stay connected to God and become more like
Jesus. The idea is that once we become Christians, we are not done. We are to
progress along the road of becoming more like Jesus, and there are many things
we can do, things Jesus himself did and Christians throughout the centuries
have done, to help us along the way. The disciplines I focused on in my book were
prayer, fellowship, submission, study, simplicity, silence, fasting, worship,
service and celebration, but there are many more.
For more information
about Julia Roller, visit her online home at juliaroller.com, become a fan on Facebook
(JuliaLRoller) or follow her on Twitter (@julialroller).
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