Being a mother and a pacesetter in a time of war

This Mother’s Day in Lebanon arrives during a time when many families are once more navigating uncertainty. Recently, I discovered myself preparing for a team meeting while also checking the news … and ensuring my son felt protected at home.

For many moms who lead teams or organisations here, the truth of leadership often includes this quiet tension that isn’t visible from the skin.

Across Lebanon, conflict has intensified in recent months, with authorities reporting that almost 700,000 people, including 200,000 children have been displaced. Families are sheltering with relatives, in churches, and in schools. For those of us who remain and who proceed to work, the backdrop to each meeting, every decision, every odd moment is the knowledge that life here is fragile. Living with the unpredictability of every day carries its own exhaustion, mental, emotional, and spiritual. 

One mother from southern Lebanon, forced to flee her home, captured this tension: “The hardest thing is leaving, not knowing what to take or should you will ever return.” Another, from across the region, wrote to us: “My heart is with every mother on this war.” That solidarity and shared weight is something every mother here understands.

And yet, we keep going.

Our days begin like all other leader’s. There are decisions to make, people to support, and techniques to maneuver forward. Yet within the background, the burden of a world that feels increasingly unstable presses in. A small voice asks the best of questions: “Are we protected?”

In moments like these, leadership takes on a special meaning. It becomes less about authority and more about presence. Less about control, and more about courage.

Leadership in difficult environments builds something powerful: resilience. Resilience is selecting to maintain leading, supporting your team, and moving the mission forward despite the obstacles you face.

As moms who lead, we supply two worlds without delay. We shoulder each the skilled world where teams rely upon us, and the tender world of our kids, who look to us to know that all the pieces shall be alright. In these moments, we aren’t just moms or managers … we’re the primary theologians our kids will ever meet.

Our children are watching. They are learning not only from what we are saying, but from how we respond when life feels uncertain. They are discovering that courage doesn’t mean the absence of fear, but the choice to maintain moving forward with faith.

As a Christian, I hold on to the reminder that leadership was never meant to be sustained by our strength alone.

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present assist in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1)

In difficult seasons, leadership becomes an act of trust. Trust that our work still matters. Trust that hope is stronger than fear. Trust that even in unstable moments, God continues to be present and still at work. As one Lebanese believer put it simply: “Without having faith and hope, we’d have been lost way back.”

I feel of the mother in Iran who wrote: “I actually have invested my strength and years into constructing our home” and who, despite all the pieces, has not stopped caring, not stopped praying, not stopped hoping.

This Mother’s Day, I would like to talk to each mother who’s leading a team, a household, a congregation, or just navigating difficulty.

Your enduring strength matters greater than you realize. The way you hold regular, the way in which you retain going, the way in which you point your kids and colleagues towards hope, that just isn’t a small thing. That is a profound act of religion.

Sometimes probably the most powerful leadership is just showing up with faith, love, and regular courage … even when the world around us looks like it’s falling apart.

Marianne Awaraji is a Christian leader based in Lebanon, where she works with SAT-7 ARABIC as their Audience Relations Manager in addition to a presenter. She speaks and writes on faith, leadership, and resilience within the Middle Eastern context.