The listing said they were “a fun-loving British family with two little boys, living in a three-story home in the Italian countryside. Au pair will get room and board, use of a vehicle, and two days off per week.” It sounded perfect. I emailed them, “20-year-old American college graduate, can be there in three weeks!”

The husband picked me up at the airport in Rome and drove like a kamikaze pilot toward his tiny village, delivering Wallace and Grommit-style commentary as we went. We pulled up to the house after dark. He grinned broadly, showing a few missing teeth along the sides. “Ready to meet the wife?”

The wife, Gillian, was in the kitchen — a tall woman with red hair, tanned freckles, and strong, capable hands. A short “hello,” and then she busied herself making me a cup of tea in silence. After a few tense minutes, he received a greeting as well: “Took you a bit.”

“Traffic was that bad,” he said meekly, the foolish grin pasted like a shield over his face. It was the first and last polite evening we had in that house.

Everyday Misery

Waking in my cold bedroom, the first thing I heard every morning was the muffled sound of Gillian’s raised voice. “What kind of . . . JOHN!! JOHN!! . . . Going to help me? . . . STOP IT, JAMES. . . . Guess I will just be getting the breakfast myself. . . . Arthur, THAT’S ENOUGH . . .”

I would trudge down to get the teakettle on the fire. The basement kitchen, built in stone like a dungeon, was the scene where our meals took place. John would sit down with that helpless grin, and both he and Gillian would speak very kindly to each other and the kids for the first few minutes. The boys would smile at me and say something cute. Then, without warning, they would scream, smack, or shout a naughty word at their parents. Gillian would ignore this, cutting up their bland vegetarian fare for them and giving short commands to John about his day.

Then suddenly she’d be screaming in their faces. John would look sheepish while she shouted at him, and then he would walk to the woodshop out back and stay busy for the day.

It was, indeed, a lovely home — built on the side of a breathtaking mountain on the outskirts of a cobblestoned village. We lived next door to a shepherd, ate eggs from the chickens outside, and bought bread at the panetteria and wine from a vineyard just over the mountain pass. Life in the village was as romantic and wholesome as I had imagined. But life in the house was chaos and emotional exhaustion.

And Gillian stood in the middle of it all, unhappily carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.

Contentious Wife

That image — of John trudging out to his work shed with a miserable Gillian inside — always reminds me of the Proverbs about the contentious woman.

It is better to live in a desert land     than with a quarrelsome and fretful woman. (21:19)

It is better to live in a corner of the housetop     than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife. (21:9)

A continual dripping on a rainy day     and a quarrelsome wife are alike. (27:15)

When the writers of Proverbs thought of a contentious woman, they often thought of bad weather. A dry place where your parched throat aches for water, but all you get is sand. A maddening drip, drip, drip on your head, coming through the ceiling in the one place on earth you hoped to be dry and warm — your home. Rather than being a haven in the storm, the contentious woman is the storm. She is, herself, the poor weather conditions; her presence is an inhospitable place.

How does a woman end up here? Does any woman really decide to become the bad weather in her husband’s life? Or are the habits of contention like other, better habits — like joy, gratitude, and laughter — which develop with time and regular feeding?

We Contend for What We Desire

A woman doesn’t become contentious overnight. Her life, like everyone’s life, is made up of many individual moments and responses. But these small moments of decision build on each other to create the mountain of material that defines a character.

No wife sets out to be the sort of person you would move onto the roof to avoid. When a woman gets caught in this cycle of unbearable behavior, she does it because she wants what she wants but can’t get it. These habits of nagging, complaining, and contention start with unmet desires, according to James 4:1–2: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.”

Listen to two women having coffee, and you will hear them describing their desires to each other. “We really need more space in the dining room . . .” “If he would just take me on a trip . . .” “I just want my mother-in-law to leave us alone . . .” “He just needs to be more of a spiritual leader . . .” “It’ll be so much better when the kids graduate . . .”

“A woman in love with Christ and the promise of a future with him is a woman filled with gratitude.”

When a woman pulls her house down around her own ears — with a stream of inhospitable complaints, wheedling orders, or picked fights — she is seeking something. She fights and quarrels because there is something she “cannot obtain.” Maybe it’s her husband’s attention. Maybe it’s the admiration of her friends. Maybe it’s joy or more comfort. Whatever it is, rest assured — her behavior is the outraged response of a disappointed woman.

Desire Disappointed

Sometimes, to be sure, those disappointments are deep and sincere; a married woman is the witness to her husband’s lifetime of sins and foibles. But haven’t we all seen the sad result when a woman gives up one of the most helpful tools in her arsenal — the art of feminine encouragement? What results is the perfect cycle: a nagging, bitter woman who becomes more bitter with every passing year, obsessing over the failings of her passive, grumpy man.

She can’t understand why her constant reminders don’t work. It doesn’t occur to her anymore to try a new language, the language of thanks and invitation — that sort of thing is for other women, women whose husbands do nice things for them. She desires and doesn’t have. She covets and cannot obtain. Discontent and ingratitude trace a direct path for her into quarrelsomeness.

All her railings against the husband, the children, and the broken dishwasher are a stand-in for her rage against God himself. God is the one who has really failed her. He is the one who withholds good things. He is the one who decided not to give her the afternoon she wanted, the husband she wanted, the job she wanted — the life she wanted.

Desire Fulfilled

Have you ever met a woman who is simply amazed at her own good fortune, who loves her life?

You watch her, confused. Why is she so happy in that house? Why is she so happy with that husband? Why is she so glad and grateful to have that job? Why on earth does she seem to smile and laugh her way from one trying moment to the next? How does she meet with the same circumstances you chafe under with a profound sense of her own blessedness to be a child of God?

If you watch these women travel through sorrow and suffering with their joy intact, you must eventually face the truth: perhaps contentment is not a product of circumstances. Perhaps your quarrelsome spirit arises not from the cards you were dealt, but from your heart of ingratitude. And perhaps the joy and gratitude available to you would also arise not from better circumstances, but from a renewed heart. Perhaps this is a heart you can ask your Father to give you, even now.

A woman in love with Christ and the promise of a future with him is a woman filled with gratitude. She is a woman to behold. She was dead, and now she lives. She was lost, and now she is found. She was blind, and now she sees. Her inheritance in Christ is sure and has begun to be realized even now in the gift of the Holy Spirit.

She has other desires, certainly. But she brings these desires to her Lord with an open hand. He teaches her many lessons in the giving and taking. Rather than finding that she covets and quarrels, she finds that she desires Christ and has him every moment, and thus everything else is gravy. Rather than hounding her husband to fulfill an ever-growing list of demands, she finds herself willing to search out and encourage what is already praiseworthy in his life.

Cure for Marital Quarrels

If you have suddenly heard the sound of your own voice in this article and have seen yourself in the contentious woman, know that you can become the sort of woman who builds her house instead of being bad weather indoors (Proverbs 14:1). Out of your heart can “flow rivers of living water” instead of a drip, drip, drip from the roof (John 7:38). Instead of a wasteland of criticism and contention, you can become an oasis of delight, nourishment, and rest for those closest to you.

Every day is an opportunity to turn in gratitude to your Father in heaven, who in Christ has already created a hospitable and safe place for you under the shelter of his wings (Psalm 91:1). In his name, you can become the sort of woman people come to in order to get out of the rain.

I have one friend on the mission field in impoverished Mongolia. Every time she enters a home, the hosts are eager and polite. They bend over backward to show her honor and listen carefully to what she has to say. She often finds them ready to accept the gospel message, perhaps too ready — it takes time to know whether they’ve really understood and embraced Christ or were simply being polite to important guests.

I have another friend who has ministered in Paris for many years in a small evangelical church. The tents, eager faces, and humble hospitality of a sparsely populated region contrast sharply with the upscale apartments, bored faces on the subway, and chic displays of urban sophistication.

When each friend describes her experience, it’s exactly what I would expect. It’s often easier to minister to people in the likes of Mongolia, who tend to think of you as their social superior. But how do you minister to those who are looking down long noses at you in places such as Paris?

Resolved — and in Bondage

When I was a teenager, I remember settling a firm resolve in myself, just in case God called me to the mission field: I would be happy to work in a remote village in Africa, an overflowing orphanage in India, or a backwoods town in the States. But I never would work among people who were rich, good-looking, and sophisticated. In other words, I’m happy to reach “downward” with the gospel but, Lord, don’t ever make me reach “upward.” Don’t make me share the gospel with people who make me uncomfortable with their external blessings.

I didn’t realize this as a teen, but my resolution about where God was allowed to call me revealed a heavy yoke around my soul, one that I would later identify and name: I was in bondage to envy.

In my twenties, the Lord did a lot of surgery on me to extricate envy from my closest relationships with sisters and friends. But it wasn’t until recently, when I began comparing the callings of my two missionary friends, each spreading gospel hope in two very different contexts, that I realized I had never thought seriously about the way envy might be hamstringing ministry in my life.

If an envious disposition once made me shy away from the idea of big-city missions, does an envious disposition ever affect the way I do ministry now, as an ordinary church member in small-town America?

Sin of the Inferior

Envy exists because inequality exists. We live in a world made by a glorious Father who has sprinkled his glory all over creation and imbued human souls with a special portion of this glory. Because of sin, the people he has made are cracked mirrors, walking around in T-shirts and jeans, but we are still made in his image and so possess trace amounts of his glory.

C.S. Lewis observed that “the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which — if you saw it now — you would be strongly tempted to worship” (The Weight of Glory, 45). This has been my exact experience of life among humans. I bump into glory all the time. I meet another woman who is beautiful or charming or intelligent or wealthy or well-connected — and I simply have to respond. Glory demands response, even the fleeting human glories that are only faint reminders of our origin.

I may respond with admiration, the impulse to get close and warm my hands on the glory, or with covetousness, resentment, and even hatred. The latter response is called envy. Envy is seething discontent over glories that God gives to other people. It is offense over inequality, a burning awareness that someone nearby is your superior in some area of life that you particularly value.

It usually strikes among peers. Sisters. Coworkers. Two girls at the top of their class. Two men in the same field of expertise. If envy is given free rein in our hearts, it can lead to broken relationships with those most intimate to us, as well as to further sins, ranging from gossip to murder (Matthew 27:18; Genesis 4:1–16).

But the envious heart could change the shape of your life’s story in another, subtler way. It could affect where you choose to minister, whom you choose to befriend, and how powerful you believe the gospel to be. Indeed, it could hamstring your effectiveness in telling people of Christ.

Reach Up, Not Just Down

What if we become so nearsighted that the borrowed glories of man obscure our vision and appetite for the original source of glory? There is a reason why so many of the New Testament Epistles contain warnings for the early church about covetous cravings for material glories.

“You desire and do not have, so you murder,” says James. “You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:2–3). And Paul asks, “While there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” (1 Corinthians 3:3).

The implication of these warnings is that, obviously, it is only human to get all coiled up over the glories we see with our eyes. Our appetites for glory are strong. But to mistake our ingrown need for God himself with the powerful craving to see glory distributed equally to ourselves and our neighbor — this is to live according to the flesh. It thwarts our ability to walk by the Spirit and obstructs the power of the gospel.

How can we love our neighbors when we’re too busy looking at their houses? How can we tell our friends that Christ is a spring of water welling up to eternal life when we’re salivating over their Instagram profiles, replete with perfectly matched children’s outfits and marriages to capable men? How can we climb over fences to tell people the good news when those fences are erected not by poverty, but riches?

How heartbreaking when our love is big enough to offer hope to those who have less than we do, yet we have no love for those with more. Is the gospel too small for these people? Is it so small in our eyes that the size of our neighbor’s paycheck is enough to obscure it?

Even Among Siblings

What about inside the church? Is inequality interfering with our ability to love and speak truth to one another inside our communities? Remember James’s warning: “If a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing . . . have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” (James 2:2–4).

But for someone with an envious heart like mine, sometimes the opposite impulse is at play. I would prefer to put distance between myself and the person who is richer than me, in whatever exterior glory, than to creep close to them for leftovers. Either of these forms of materialism — preferring the rich because you hope to benefit from proximity, or preferring the poor because inequality makes you uncomfortable — demonstrates a painful blindness to the kingdom of God.

Instead, we are to see rich and poor alike as human souls in need of refreshment and exhortation. The longer we live in this world, the clearer we see God’s work through the giving and taking of material blessings. His plans demonstrate to us, over and over, that he provides our every need and intends nothing short of freedom from sin. His sovereign caretaking teaches us, with Paul, how to be brought low and how to abound, how to face plenty and how to face hunger — thanking and praising him all the same (Philippians 4:12).

In other words, we need to get comfortable with the idea that God works according to his pleasure, to give and to take at will, and always for his glory and for our good. He calls us not only to weep with those who weep, but to rejoice with those who rejoice. God is Lord of us all.

Eyes on the Glory

There’s only one way to learn to face plenty and hunger, abundance and need alike with serenity, joy, and self-forgetful love. We feast our eyes and our appetites on glory himself. In Christ, we are no longer cut off from the source of glory. We no longer have to unsettle ourselves over the derivative glories possessed by the little kings and queens he has made. Their glories are only ever whispers, made to draw our eyes to the thunderous noise of God’s pleasure in his own glory.

With our bellies full of his mercy and grace to us, with our eyes enamored by the beauty and splendor of Christ’s humility and might, we no longer have to stay hungry for our neighbor’s house or enamored with our neighbor’s husband. Inequalities are not flattened in the presence of God, but they trouble and distract us less and less. In him, we are all wealthy beyond our wildest imaginations. In his presence, the most intimidating individual we’ve ever tried to love becomes creaturely and dependent. Our envious hearts, once they are satiated on this God, are free to reach upward with the gospel, and not just downward.

“How do you feel about Roe being struck down?” I emailed an old college friend.

“Ticked off,” she wrote back, “and scared because if I were to get pregnant, my medications, which keep me alive, are not good for babies. I was even more ticked when Tennessee enacted those trigger laws banning aborting at six weeks. I knew too many people who got pregnant in middle school and high school. . . .

“I firmly believe in protecting life. I believe in vaccines. I believe in supporting families. I believe in letting adults and their medical professionals make personal decisions that only affect them in a private manner. . . . I don’t believe abortion is evil. Or wrong. Or sinful.”

How Did Roe Fall on You?

When Roe was struck down, I was at a park, meeting another mom. She walked up and blurted out (by way of greeting), “Roe was struck down!” I gasped, sat stunned for a moment, tried to wrap my mind around the fact that I was drawing my breath, for the first time, in a post-Roe country.

Seven months ago, we all lived in the America of my birth. This was an America that legally affirmed the inalienable right of women to a form of “health care” that intentionally ends the life of children in the womb. This position, established by the Supreme Court in 1973, led to the near tripling of annual abortion deaths in the United States within eight years. More than 63 million babies lost their lives in the years between Roe’s ascendancy and its reversal.

“More than 63 million babies lost their lives in the years between Roe’s ascendancy and its reversal.”

Many people I know have prayed for this day longer than I have been alive. They have established pregnancy centers offering family education, free ultrasounds, and free clothing and supplies. They have adopted and fostered. They have cared for babies and children while single mothers were at work.

But other people I know, like my friend from college, lament and even panic over the end of Roe. They experience fear, the fear of former rights revoked and children uncared for. What is the difference in worldview that produces such perfectly opposing opinions on abortion?

From Lamentation to Celebration

How is it that I, a mother of three, and my friend, a mother of three, have such fervent beliefs — and that our beliefs are absolutely incompatible?

One of us believes that an unwanted life is worse than intentionally inflicted death, that a person who can’t survive on his or her own doesn’t have the rights of personhood, and that if we declare life to begin at birth, then that is when it begins. The other believes that murder is not a viable solution to any problem, that life is a gift and responsibility that can’t be thrown off at will, and that neither mother nor doctor has the right to kill.

We quiver with conviction in describing our views to the other. I celebrate the end of Roe in my country without reservation. She decries it without reservation.

The thing is, fifteen years ago, I would have been lamenting right along with her.

Godlessness Births Hatred

At the nominal Christian college I attended, my career-driven friends and I didn’t analyze our deepest assumptions about our futures. We didn’t realize that our vision for life was deeply influenced by the air we were all breathing, which was a confusing blend of nineties purity movement and second-wave feminism. We only knew that we were expected to “have it all,” and even I, with my stay-at-home-mom aspirations, was unwilling to imagine a life that didn’t include some kind of glorious accomplishment out in the “real world.”

A few years after graduating, having walked away from church and faith, I found myself in the pregnancy test aisle at Walgreens. Would I keep it? I thought — and then was shocked by the question. I’d grown up staunchly defensive of the unborn. But for the first time, I was actually experiencing the fear of an unwanted pregnancy. I felt the despair of not liking the world enough to bring a child into it. I imagined the reaction from friends, family, and former church members when they saw me and my baby, alone against the world.

Until that day, I had never understood the close link between godlessness and death. I don’t just mean that the wages of sin is death (it is). I mean that within just a few years of rejecting God as Father, I was also willing to reject life itself. I would have preferred not to live, and I couldn’t imagine a baby in my womb would make a different choice. My godless view of the world had created a hatred of the world, and of existence itself. Motherhood would have meant embracing life as good and worthwhile. I knew I didn’t have it in me.

God didn’t give me a baby that year. I never had to test how far my hatred of life would go.

Fearing Life in an Unsafe World

A few months later, God saved my soul, and he brought a man into my life a year after that. As the years passed, he gave me three precious children. I am currently expecting a fourth. I am far enough along that if I wanted to end the heartbeat that I’ve now heard half a dozen times, I’d have to drive to one of about six states in the country.

When you spend all your time nurturing life, feeding life, telling young children about the wonders of life, it’s harder to remember what it was like when death seemed preferable to life. But I can still put my finger on that fear, especially in the early hours of the morning if I awake from a nightmare or hear my child coughing. It’s the fear of life itself. The fear of responsibility’s weight.

Even in my latest pregnancy, I still experience that fear of bringing new life into a world that is in one sense totally unsafe. Even under the protection of marriage and family, my children are held only by God’s hand, and I still have to wrestle with him daily over the promises he’s made for them (and the promises he hasn’t). I now understand more deeply than ever how pain and fear is part of the curse connected to motherhood, and how only in Christ can any of us see the world as it is: a place of hope, joy, blessing, and ultimate victory over sin and death. It is a place worth bringing children into — but only because it’s a place ruled by a kind and loving Father.

“This world is a place worth bringing children into — but only because it’s a place ruled by a kind and loving Father.”

And yet, without the lens of hope that drops into place when we embrace the kingship of Christ, death seems stronger than life — and sometimes even preferable. We all are living with our terminal disease, in a world with its own terminal disease.

Besides the realities of death and curse, we all inherit cultural attitudes toward motherhood without knowing we’ve done so. We all breathe air from a place that chooses to see child and elder care as unskilled labor, which we outsource to the less educated. It’s a place that sees motherhood as the final cap on a pyramid of career moves — just one more accomplishment to adorn a more necessary list. It’s a place that tells its women to throw off encumbrances (including people) that keep us from tending to ourselves first and always. It’s a place that disincentivizes fatherhood and subsidizes abandonment and murder. It’s a place that has managed to sell women the word empowerment, by which she trades love and commitment for the total loss of self and becomes a sexual commodity for the pleasure of men who have no intention of cherishing her humanity.

True Value of Motherhood

Motherhood is valuable. It’s not valuable like a Precious Moments card; it’s valuable like time is valuable, like life itself is valuable. It’s valuable with the kind of value that God names when he blesses meek things, quiet things, unseen things. It has a value that reaches beyond the fiscal, that asks better questions than “Can I earn more than the babysitter I pay to watch my children while I’m gone?” and “Do unwanted pregnancies result in children who are a burden to the church and state?”

This is what’s valuable in God’s economy: life, because he made it; and love, because he embodies and commands it.

And looking at life and love as fundamentally valuable means that we look at motherhood as the stewardship of something fundamentally valuable. A single mother is the steward of something fundamentally valuable. A married middle-aged mother is the steward of something fundamentally valuable. An adoptive mother is the steward of something fundamentally valuable.

A woman who accepts the call to motherhood steps into a story written by someone else. She steps in despite inevitable fear and pain. She steps in to demonstrate in her own body the unanswerable story of life triumphing over death. Motherhood is God’s inventive answer to the question, “Is life good, or isn’t it?”

And when the laws of the land step forward to throw the burden of proof back onto death (instead of onto life for mothers and children), that law has made a step toward confirming and proclaiming the truths built into God’s world and word.

Thou Shall Not Kill

When Roe was struck down, more was accomplished than the erection of more hoops for abortion-minded mothers to jump through. It was a moral marker for our nation. Every time a human government makes or upholds legislation that reflects accurately the good established by God in his world and word, it functions the way it was meant to function. It sends a message about what is right and what is wrong. It establishes a moral code that does in fact work in the hearts of the people.

I rejoice in the reversal because of lives saved. But I also rejoice the way I always rejoice when truth is declared, from any lips, in any forum. A breath of fresh air blows through the nation in the form of sanity, as our human hearts are reminded of a law that was stamped there before we knew ourselves, stamped without our own consent: Thou shalt not kill.

For My Friend on the Other Side

As I continue talking with my friend, I gently press for logical consistency by asking questions about rights. When does the infant in the womb become human? On what basis do we confer the right to live? If the baby has no right to live until it has passed through the birth canal, what about a few moments after it has passed through? A few minutes before? If we confer the right to live only on human beings who are competent to survive, what does that mean for the disabled child or adult, or even for a healthy baby in the first few years after it’s born? She keeps talking with me, and for that I’m grateful.

As we talk, I’m aware that underneath the logical issues about human rights, the strength of her beliefs has more to do with the pain of motherhood under the shadow of death. What she really wonders is, Is life good, or isn’t it?

Does someone have a sure hand on the steering wheel of this dangerous world, or not? Should we not limit life on the earth when life is so difficult and dangerous? Is there any possible reason to do what is right in obedience to the King who reigns justly, to embrace the gift of life even when the costs are so high? Could his promises possibly be true, really true, when he says that soon, every tear will be wiped away, “and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4)? Will we see him face to face and hear his account of everything sad coming untrue?

When I look this last question in the eye, it’s too much for me to bear. I know it’s too much for her heart too, if she ever thinks of it in the watches of the night. Some things seem too good to be true.

When I was about five, my dad invited me and my older sister into his home studio for fun. Like most of the musicians and producers in Nashville, he had a basement room outfitted with everything you need to make a decent demo: a dark soundproofed booth with a mic and stool, another room with a soundboard, and a thick glass window in between — for giving the “thumbs up” sign between takes.

He let me try first. I stood in the tiny room and sang along to the track playing through an enormous pair of headphones. In about three minutes, I was losing interest. I began to complain that the headphones were squeezing my ears, and my dad let me go back to playing.

Then it was my sister Sophie’s turn. And apparently, this was the day my dad discovered Sophie’s voice.

What did they work on? I didn’t hear it until a few weeks later when my parents had friends over for supper. My dad mentioned the session they’d done, and our guests wanted to hear it. Everybody sat down in the living room, but for some reason, I didn’t go in.

I stood in the hallway outside as the track began and Sophie’s voice burst into the air.

Even at seven years old, her voice was clear, powerful, and controlled. My little stomach flipped. I cringed outside the door as the guests reacted. My dad modestly turned the volume down after the first minute. Why had I left the studio? Why did I quit so quickly? Why didn’t I see that it would lead to Sophie being shown off while I was left standing out in the hallway?

Wishing Against Others

The smell of foam insulation in a recording booth would become very familiar to me in years to come. My dad did a great job of including all his kids in the music of his life. He invited his daughters onstage with him regularly during church concerts.

Later, he used connections to get us all jobs working as session singers for children’s projects — allowing us to save for future cars or colleges. He produced and paid for me to record a CD of jazz cover tunes when I was fifteen, and was always uniquely supportive of my voice — even if I knew it was more idiosyncratic and less powerful than Sophie’s. She was compared to Mariah Carey, I was compared to Billie Holiday, my younger sisters were later compared to The Wailin’ Jennys — and my dad managed to be a fan of all of it.

But when I look back, I’m shocked to recognize this moment as the earliest flowering of envy in my life. Peering back through the decades, I can see my five-year-old self standing in the hallway. The impulse of her heart is unmistakable.

I wished my dad would not play the CD. I wished the CD had been scratched or mislaid. I wished her voice didn’t sound like that. I wished the guests weren’t around to hear it.

In fact, I wished the glory of her voice was banished out of existence.

Inequality and the Eyes That Matter

The glory of a voice like Sophie’s is a deliberate gift from the God of glory. He stamps all of his creation with this glory — though mankind has a double portion.

Man, who is made in the image of God, has been “crowned with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5). His glory is borrowed, reflective, derivative. But it’s real. And because it’s real, his fellow human beings — all of whom have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” (Romans 1:23) — are moved to respond to it. Even in small amounts. Even in the temporary forms we find in our fellow creatures.

The glory of charisma, of competence, of intelligence, of beauty, of artistic talent, of wealth, of relational security — these all give us a sensation of brushing our fingers against the locked door of heaven itself. And we must respond, whether in admiration, in enjoyment, in worship, or (like the five-year-old Tilly) in horror and hatred.

There’s a name for that horror and hatred: envy.

Humblest of Pleasures

The strength of our horror over the glory of others corresponds to the strength of our appetite. We not only want to enjoy glory — we want to be enveloped in glory, to assume some part of it into ourselves.

This desire can be good and creaturely. In a discussion of heaven’s glories, C.S. Lewis shared that he’d always been uncomfortable with the idea of “an eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17) waiting for us in heaven. What kind of glory could this be? he wondered. Fame, like the vain kind you seek among your peers? He felt it was impossible to desire glory and also be properly humble, until something clicked for him:

Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years, prevented me from understanding what is in fact the humblest, the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures — nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure of a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator. (The Weight of Glory, 37)

Mankind was made “to glorify God and enjoy him forever” (in the words of the Westminster Catechism). But this process could never leave man unchanged. He was also made to be glorified himself — crowned with the glory of his Father’s eternal pleasure in him.

Small Heart of Envy

One of our most basic needs is to be looked upon by the Eyes That Matter, and told, in the Voice That Matters, “Well done, good and faithful servant. . . . Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21). It’s not enough to look on his glory; we want to be let inside. We want to be transformed, to be resplendent, to be strong enough to revel in his glory without shame. We were designed to see pleasure in the eyes of our heavenly Father.

Here’s the connection to my five-year-old self. Like a second Cain, I reacted in sinful displeasure when my sister got a “Well done” from my earthly father. I couldn’t handle hearing another praised by our father, because envy operates in a zero-sum world. Envy believes the lie that God’s universe is one of essential scarcity.

“Envy believes the lie that God’s universe is one of essential scarcity.”

The envious heart is too small. It can’t fathom a God who is limitless in his expressions of pleasure and overflowing love. Our fallen minds truly believe there’s not enough of his plenty to go around. This means that if someone else was given a portion of borrowed glory (a glorious talent, beauty, skill, job, or intimate relationship), then there must be less left for me.

What Can Quench Envy?

It’s not just little girls in headphones who hunger for glory. All of us seek beauty and light and fame in our free moments — watching our shows, listening to our songs, shopping for wedding photographers, hiking the lake trail, entwining our souls-in-bodies with other souls-in-bodies, posting our updates, kissing our children, and tucking ourselves into a booth at the local craft beer place for deep conversation. We are glory-seekers, sniffing the wind and watching the horizon. Let a thing whisper, however falsely, however faintly, of our God and Father, and we will run after it.

After all this seeking, how can we believe the good news when it comes? It’s too good to be true; it’s too much to bear:

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:9–13)

“The envious heart can’t fathom a God who is limitless in his expressions of pleasure and overflowing love.”

We’re in the hallway outside, fuming that another child of God was given glories we weren’t. We’re wondering if the love of the Father will run out before we walk into the room, if he’ll look at us like Isaac looked at Esau and say, “He has taken away your blessing” (Genesis 27:35). We can’t imagine what kind of glory would make it okay.

What glory could take away the sting of being poor while another is rich, of being single while another is married with children, of giving our best to make mediocre paintings while someone else’s effortless eye creates a masterpiece?

Envy Will Drown in Glory

There is, however, a glory that will swallow up the sting of inequality (though it has not promised to take away inequality itself): this light has given us the right to become children of God. And this is the glory that can work such wonders:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

The pleasure of the Father will overtake us and swallow up all else — pleasure because of what Christ did on our behalf, pleasure because we’ve been reworked into his glorious image from the inside out. We now look like Christ — his glory will one day envelop us and transform us. It has begun even now:

We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18).

Envy doesn’t stand a chance. In the final day, it will be swallowed up in glory. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

In 1914, as the storms of a “world war” began to blow across Europe, and millions of men rushed to enlist, Ivor Novello and Lena Ford wrote a patriotic anthem aimed at the women who were left behind.

Let no tears add to their hardshipAs the soldiers pass along. . . .Keep the home fires burningWhile your hearts are yearningThough your lads are far awayThey dream of home.

The public sentiment of the time assumed that women had a role to play in the war, though they would not be fighting and dying. The men went to fight on the front lines. The women ensured there was something at home worth fighting for.

We Christians are still at war. Our wartime has gone on for thousands of years and will last until Christ comes to end it. The difference is that in this war — the spiritual war — the home is located in the heat of the battle, and we mothers are in combat roles.

Why Satan Targets Mom

Our enemies in motherhood are not flesh and blood; our enemies are “the rulers, . . . the authorities, . . . the cosmic powers over this present darkness, . . . the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). Our enemy is not in Europe; he is “going to and fro on the earth” (Job 1:7). He “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

“Mothers are stewards of the home, where Satan hopes to do his worst work — and often sees worse defeat.”

Satan’s warfare on woman and her seed is not a side project. It is a major part of his strategy. To Satan, mothers represent the unrelenting multiplication of hated human images of the hated God-man who is coming soon to end his evil reign. Mothers are stewards of the home, superintendents of the precious time called childhood, where Satan hopes to do his worst work — and often sees worse defeat.

Innocence, flourishing, joy, productivity, gratitude, meek service, earliest wonder, and maddening physicality all have a special place in a home with children. And Satan violently opposes all of them.

How Satan Targets Mom

Satan and his ilk look for strategic places to attack, areas of vulnerability. Many of his favorites are common to all mankind, but there are some modes of attack that are particularly successful with Christian mothers.

1. Satan makes suffering an excuse for sinning.

A woman’s spiritual health during the grueling years of motherhood depends partly on her ability to see the difference between her spirit and her body. She must learn to inhabit her female, fallen body with humility and wisdom.

Sleepless exhaustion or morning sickness can bring with them confusion about what sort of malady we’re dealing with. It feels spiritual, because it affects our mood and, at times, impairs our ability to perform and serve in the ways we usually can. There is a real spiritual temptation that comes with physical suffering, but the presence of physical suffering doesn’t mean we’ve already lost a battle.

Satan, of course, can demoralize us with suffering. But he also can leverage suffering to get us to actually sin. He would rather us not know that it is, in fact, possible to suffer physically without sinning in anger, self-pity, or despair. Satan would have us believe one implies the presence of the other, or necessarily leads to the other. There are many ways to sin in our weakness, but the physical weakness itself is not the sin. We need to learn (and relearn) the difference.

The same goes for other illnesses and hormonal changes throughout life. Our bodies are female, and they are under a particular form of the curse. Motherhood will be physically hard in some unusual ways. But our physical state need not be the gauge or the steering wheel for our spiritual state. Satan would love nothing more than to keep us in confusion about what ails us.

2. He whispers, “Did God really say . . . ?”

Women, from the very beginning, have been a special target for a certain pattern of deceit. Satan still favors the question that felled Eve: “Did God really say . . . ?”

One of his favorite ways to seed this destructive question in our day is through social media and podcasts. The Internet is a new way that women, even those working at home, can regularly access a steady stream of advice, solicited and unsolicited. Our friends offer advice on how to deal with husbands and children. Images, shows, and books offer advice on what is good and beautiful, what can be expected (or demanded) out of life. Women, who love to give and seek advice, have a daily choice to make about what advice we look for, what we listen to, and what voices influence our daily decisions.

The whispers are everywhere if we listen for them: “Did God really say, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ (Acts 20:35)? Seems like all this giving might kill you.” “Did God really say, ‘Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord’ (Ephesians 5:22)? That seems impossible and probably unhealthy.” “Did God really say, ‘Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name’ (Psalm 97:12)? Seems obvious that to give thanks when you don’t feel thankful would be inauthentic. And what about the women around you who don’t have anything to be thankful for? How would it make them feel?”

Some of Satan’s best work is accomplished by women talking to women, in the floating world of disembodied souls on the Internet. So every Christian woman who would grow in wisdom actively pursues sound doctrine (Titus 2:1), letting the word of Christ dwell in her richly (Colossians 3:16), regularly meditating on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable (Philippians 4:8).

Perhaps one of the best ways we can steward our attention and our hearts is by turning from some of the online forms of exchanged advice, and instead seeking out flesh-and-blood relationships formed on the basis of passages like Titus 2. A woman who knows she is being discipled by someone (or something) at all times is a woman who can see her need for good discipleship, and humble herself to ask for it in the local church.

Soaking in the word of God, learning from mature Christians, and praying fervently — these are all ways we oppose Satan’s devices in whispering, “Did God really say . . . ?” Waiting for truth to find us is not sufficient; we must actively resist his lies by feeding ourselves with what God has said.

3. He blinds us to our nearest enemy.

Satan often doesn’t mind our being vigilant about outside threats. Most mothers are. But he has a vested interest in keeping us from doing active battle with the threat that is closest to home — our own flesh. The world, the flesh, and the devil are all against us in this war. We can’t do effective battle with any of them unless we’re willing to do battle with all of them.

“Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh,” Paul says. “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Galatians 5:16–17). This simply means that as we pass through the years of parenting, we should expect routine rounds of repentance: to God, to our husbands, to our children. It shouldn’t surprise or dismay us that this is part of our warfare. We should see it as a normal part of the Christian life.

We should expect growth to come over time, as our affections develop. As the years go by, our obedience should look more and more like grateful enjoyment of normal life, walked out lovingly, joyfully, peacefully, patiently, kindly, faithfully, gently, and with self-control (Galatians 5:22). These are the natural fruits of the spirit.

What Threatens Satan?

Our lives are not primarily a battle against phantom menaces out in the world who threaten to influence our children. Our children, like us, are conceived in iniquity and born in sin (Psalm 51:5). The enemy of our children’s hearts is already here; it’s already inside the camp.

“Make no mistake — our children, no matter what they hear us say, will know what our hearts truly love.”

Our children will get the most benefit, not from our public statements about what morally outrages us, but from our souls being watered by God’s word and our hearts being filled with yearning for Christ himself. Make no mistake — our children, no matter what they hear us say, will know what our hearts truly love. Satan would have it so that we never find out what our hearts love. He would have us preach a gospel to our children that never reaches our affections, our sin, our desires.

What threatens Satan? A mother’s soul overflowing with Christ — a soul feasting every day at the table he has laid for us:

Come, everyone who thirsts,     come to the waters. . . .Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,     and your labor for that which does not satisfy?Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,     and delight yourselves in rich food. (Isaiah 55:1–2)