Lift Your Eyes: 10 Days of Beholding Christ in Motherhoodਨਮੂਨਾ

Day 1: Where Does Our Help Come From?

On a crisp October day in 2012, we brought our first baby home from the hospital. As I cradled him in my arms, I was overcome with a flood of emotions—wonder, adoration, and a nagging sense of trepidation. The weight of my responsibilities as a brand-new mom felt almost crushing. I couldn’t help but wonder about my baby’s future: Would he learn to breastfeed and sleep through the night? Would he develop as he should? Would he grow to be kind and respectful? Would he break my heart? My thoughts quickly turned inward, and I felt vulnerable and uncertain. As I gazed at my little one, I was hopelessly in love, but I also felt weak, hormonal, and already exhausted. I knew the journey ahead would be the greatest adventure of my life, but at the time, the questions I had about my ability to mother him seemed to outweigh all the others. How would I know what to do when he started crying? Would we be able to bond? Did I have what it takes to be the mom he deserves?

Now, over a decade into mothering, I still face questions. Although I learned to meet my babies’ needs and to survive on less sleep, I am still often overwhelmed by the job of shepherding the lives of my four young children. When the needs of motherhood press in on me, it isn’t always my first inclination to lift my eyes to Christ. Instead, I tend to gaze at the “hills” of motherhood: never-ending mountains of laundry, toddler tantrums, fears about the future, and the weight of comparison. But when we fix our eyes on the needs right in front of us, we forget that our God stands ready to help. We forget that he is as close as our shadow (Psalm 121:5).

The writers of the Psalms understood our natural human inclination to fret and worry. In Psalm 121, the psalmist sings, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come?” He immediately answers his own question by singing in the face of his fears: “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (verses 1-2).

On our parenting journey, we often find ourselves stretched thin and feeling weak. Few things expose our need for a helper as profoundly as motherhood. Those hard days lead us to ask, “Will God really provide everything I need? Is he enough?” And what we need—more than a fresh cup of coffee, an hour alone, or more sleep—is to know the source of our help. We need his living Word to shape our perspective, remind us of our identity, and equip us for the holy work before us. We need him.

Using Psalm 121 as a framework, each of the following days in this YouVersion plan will address a different aspect of God’s character as revealed in the psalm, with a concluding word of encouragement on Day 10. We will learn how to “lift our eyes” from the daily realities of motherhood to the steadfast love of the Lord. And when we realize that all of Scripture is ultimately about Christ (Luke 24:27; John 5:39), we will see that Jesus is the fulfillment of this psalm. In light of the redemptive work he has done on our behalf, we know that Christ himself is our help, our provider, the God who sees, our protector, our keeper, our comfort, our shepherd, and our sustainer.

As moms, we spend a lot of time looking down: at our phones, at the toddler at our feet, at our never-ending to-do lists. We also gaze to the side, envious of what others have. We might even look behind us, nostalgic about the past or ahead to the future, hoping life will someday feel more manageable than it does right now. But what if God, through his Word, is gently placing his hand under our chins and lifting our eyes upward toward him? When we fix our eyes on him and remember all that he has done, we can move forward with purpose, knowing that he is with us and has promised to help us every step of the way.

Where does our help come from? It comes from the Lord. Let’s lift our eyes to him.