If you’re six weeks postpartum or six months pregnant, or you’re somewhere in the blur of a house full of little people, and you love Jesus but can’t remember the last time you sat with your Bible without someone climbing on you, this one is for you.
You’ve probably been handed the tidy version of the Christian mom life. Quiet time at sunrise. Scripture memorized. Kids prayed over. Marriage thriving. Meals made. Everything done well, with a smile.
Here’s what’s actually true underneath it: a lot of us love God with our whole hearts and still end up treating our faith like a to-do list. We don’t mean to. It just happens, almost by default. Then we go to bed feeling like we failed a test God never even gave us.
In this post, we’ll look at how faith turns into a checklist, and at two simple postures I’ve come to call return and receive. Then I’ll give you one small thing to try this week. Just one. And Mama, you’re not walking through this alone. Scoot over. I’m sitting right next to you.
When Faith Quietly Becomes a Checklist
Prayer, Bible reading, fasting, fellowship, serving, giving. Those are the spiritual disciplines, and they are good gifts. I’m not knocking any of them.
But somewhere along the way, they can turn into a scoreboard. Did I have my quiet time? Did I pray over the kids? Did I get to church on time? Did I read enough?
Now put that scoreboard into your actual season. Maybe your “quiet time” is five minutes in a locked bathroom. Maybe it’s nonexistent. I have four kids, a household, a business, a marriage I want to keep thriving, and self-care that lands dead last on the list, so I’m not judging. I’m interrupted constantly, and I know you are too.
When faith becomes another checklist, motherhood makes it feel impossible. Then guilt piles on top of the exhaustion.
God gave us the spiritual disciplines as a way to grow closer to Him, not as a measuring stick.
Jesus actually talked about this. In Matthew 6, He takes the big religious habits of His day (giving, praying, fasting) and says to watch why you’re doing them. He isn’t saying stop praying. He’s asking who it’s for. Is it for the Father, or for my own sense of whether I’m a good Christian?
And that doesn’t mean you have to hide away to pray. It’s good for our kids to see us keep God front and center. It’s the heart behind it that matters.
Hosea 6:6 says it plainly: “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” God isn’t after your performance. He wants you. He wants you to know Him, not just know about Him.
A Word About Proverbs 31
I know some of you just felt your shoulders tense.
I spent a whole year taking her characteristics one by one, trying to master them all. But Proverbs 31 is a poem, an acrostic running through the whole Hebrew alphabet, a portrait of a woman of wisdom. It was never meant to be a list for us to grade ourselves against. And look at where it lands in verse 30: she fears the Lord. That’s her heart.
That’s not a failing grade. It’s a misread test.
Return: Turning Back Without the Guilt Spiral
Here’s how I think of it. Return is what we do the moment we notice we’ve drifted.
And we drift. We’re human. It isn’t because we stopped loving Him. It’s because life got loud. A baby woke up. A kid got sick. A hard week became a hard month. Then one day you realize, I haven’t really talked to God in a while.
Here’s where checklist thinking gets sneaky. It says, You blew it. Now you have to make up for it. Catch up on the missed reading. Pray for an hour. Earn your way back.
But that’s not return.
Isaiah 30:15 says, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength.” Look at what sits next to returning. It’s rest, not hustling. And the verse ends with “but you were unwilling,” because the people were running to Egypt, to horses, to their own strength. That’s survival mode: more effort, more planning, more speed. Meanwhile God is saying, Just turn around.
Then verse 18 says the Lord waits, or longs, to be gracious to you. While we’re running around trying to hold it all together, He’s standing there, waiting to be kind to us.
The Picture of Return: Luke 15
Remember the prodigal son? He comes to his senses, gets up, and heads home. That’s the whole act of return: he got up.
But notice what he’s carrying. He’s rehearsed a speech: I’m no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me one of your hired workers. He has a plan to work his way back. That’s a checklist.
And the father? “While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran.” In that culture, grown men didn’t run. It wasn’t dignified. This father threw dignity away because his kid was coming home.
Even when you’re still a long way off, even when your return is just a whispered “Lord, I’m so tired and I don’t even know where to start,” He sees you and He runs.
Romans 2:4 says God’s kindness is what leads us to repentance. Kindness, not guilt and not shame.
Return doesn’t have to be an hour. It can be one breath and one sentence: God, I’m back.
That’s not a setback. It’s a homecoming.
Receive: The Part We’re Worst At
Look at the story again. The son opens his mouth to give his speech, and his dad interrupts him. No job application. Instead: the best robe, a ring, sandals, a feast. You are still my son.
The son had to return, and then he had to receive. He had to let his father put the robe on him, and let himself be treated like a son when he felt like he could only come back as a servant.
That’s hard, especially for us.
Think about your day. We feed, cook, rock, clean, wipe, soothe, pour out. Then someone offers us a meal, a compliment, or just to hold the baby for a minute, and what do we say? Oh no, it’s okay. I’m fine. I’ve got this.
We are so good at giving love and so bad at receiving it, and we do the very same thing with God.
Henri Nouwen wrote a whole book on this, The Return of the Prodigal Son, and one of his points is that accepting love is often harder than giving it. (That’s me. That’s every mother I know.)
Jesus meets that in Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Listen to the verb. I will give you. Not “once you finish your to-do list.” Not “once you’ve earned it.”
And then He says His yoke is easy and His burden is light. In Jesus’ day, yokes were shaped to fit the ox so they wouldn’t rub the neck wrong, and the Greek word for “easy” can carry the idea of well-fitting. His yoke isn’t one-size-fits-all pressure. It’s made to fit you, right where you are, in the season you’re in. And a younger ox was often paired with an older, stronger one who carried most of the load.
Mama, that ox is Jesus. You’re not pulling this alone.
Receiving isn’t lazy or passive. It’s an open hand that says, Lord, I can’t do this on my own, so I’m going to stop pretending I can. It’s John 15: the branch doesn’t strain to make sap. It stays connected, and the life flows through it.
That’s not giving up. It’s abiding.
“But Rebecca, I’ve Never Left”
I see you, Mama. You’re at church every Sunday. You never ran off. You don’t feel like the prodigal.
Then keep reading in Luke 15, because there’s an older brother. He stayed. He did everything right. And when his brother came home and Dad threw a party, he was furious: I’ve served you all these years and never disobeyed. Where’s my party? That’s a checklist talking.
And the father says something so tender: “Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”
He had access to everything the whole time. He just never received it, working like a servant in a house where he was a son.
A lot of us are the older brother. We’re the responsible ones, the rule-followers, the ones who keep everyone’s lives running. And underneath it, we’re tired and maybe a little resentful. What we need isn’t more effort. It’s to hear the Father say, Everything I have is yours. Come, sit down, receive.
That’s not entitlement. It’s sonship, and daughterhood.
Postures, Not Tasks
Now a warning, because I know myself. I can take return and receive and turn them right back into a checklist. Did I return today? Did I receive enough? And then we’ve missed it completely.
They’re not tasks. They’re postures, a way of standing before God with open hands. Theologian Kyle Strobel describes spiritual practices as postures for receiving God’s grace, and I think that’s exactly right. The point isn’t that we grow ourselves. It’s that we present ourselves to Him and He does the growing.
(A quick credit: writers like Nouwen and Strobel have written beautifully about returning to the Father and receiving His grace. What I’ve tried to do is name return and receive as two disciplines of their own and bring them home to mothers in the thick of it. That’s my way of seeing it. Take what helps.)
Here’s where my doula heart comes in. Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God,” is in the middle of a war. It’s more like stop striving and remember that I’m in charge. For a tired mama, that’s even better news. You can stop striving. He’s got this.
I’ve watched this in labor rooms. When a mama stops fighting her contractions and lets her body do what it’s doing, when she softens, drops her shoulders, and opens her hands, the intensity doesn’t disappear, but the way she moves through it changes. I think return and receive work the same way. The hard thing doesn’t go away. You just stop bracing against it, open your hands, and let yourself be held in the middle of it.
That’s not the absence of the hard. It’s being held inside it.
The Anchor for This Season
Everything I write comes back to one verse:
“As a mother comforts her newborn, so I will comfort you.” — Isaiah 66:13
You already know how you comfort your baby. You don’t make them earn it. You pick them up and hold them close.
That’s how He holds you.
One Small Step
I don’t want to hand you a new to-do list. So here’s one ten-second practice: when you catch yourself drifting, take one breath and whisper, “I’m back.” That’s return. Take a second breath, open your hands, palms up, and say, “I’m here. I receive.” That’s receive. If that’s all you do this week, it is enough.
Here’s where it can fit:
- If you’re pregnant: Try it in the quiet moments when you feel your baby move.
- If you’re in the postpartum fog: Try it during a feeding, in the shower, or in the car line.
- If you’ve got a house full of kids: Go to the bathroom and close the door. I won’t tell. Or sit right down on the floor where you are and let your kids watch you open your hands. They’re learning something from that too.
Let’s Keep Talking
Which part landed hardest for you: the checklist, the return, or the receiving? Leave a comment or send me a message and tell me. And if you know a mama who needs to hear this today, send it her way.
Next week: we’re talking about what doula advocacy actually looks like in the birth room, and the unrealistic expectations floating around online.