Through the Window of a Mother’s Love
With Mom
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.” Isaiah 49:15
My Dearest Daughters,
For most people, their first experience of God comes through their mother. If He is love, then a child’s first taste of that love comes through her arms.
God arranged the world with windows into eternity—prototypes and shadows scattered like signposts, drawing our eyes and hearts toward Him. We glimpse His majesty in creation, in mountains and oceans, stars and storms, but we encounter His nature in relationship.
Every bond on earth was designed to show us something of His shape, His form, His essence. And the very first of those bonds—the very first place a person comes to know His warmth, His nourishment, His comfort—is through a mother. Though not the only stage in a child’s journey, it is the first. And if they are ever to come to know the strength of fatherhood, and the love of the Father above, it begins with the embrace of a mother.
Helen, when I think of that truth, my heart returns to the day you were born. I wrote about that moment years later in my book, A Time to Be Born, because it marked the beginning of my understanding of what motherhood truly meant.
Excerpts from A Time to Be Born:
Before I’d become a mother, my dreams for myself had been lofty. I’d envisioned bustling foreign cities, the music of other languages, the spicy scents of exotic markets as I served in mission work. These “important” things dominated my thoughts. Motherhood? That was simply life’s background music, peripheral to the “important” things—that is, until Helen. But now, holding my first baby in my arms, her milky scent sweet and her chubby warm body’s weight pressed against mine made me feel as if I’d been let in on a profound secret.
My first birth proportioned my world differently than ever before, shifting the weight of my thoughts and dreams from inside to outside of myself. My memories drifted to that life-changing day of March 30, 1998 . . .
When, at last, our little wet baby Helen slipped from my body and passed from my mother’s hands into my own trembling ones, I clutched her to myself in gratitude and disbelief. She opened one eye, gazing at me as if seeing me from another world. Her tiny red fingers clutched mine, and in that moment, a light seemed to ignite in my life that cast the whole of my world in a new glow.
The reduction and triumph of birth had conveyed something to me I’d never seen before. Every time I looked into her deep, black eyes or touched her velvet skin, I thought, What could be more wonderful than holding in my hands the precious, moldable clay of a human soul? What could be more important than nurturing the seeds of eternal love in a human life? What if God gave me this child to raise to become a Sarah or an Esther?
I knew my dream had come true all in that one night; I had become a missionary, and my mission field began right there in my own bedroom. In that moment I had also become a teacher, a nurse: a mother. Something unfurled like the wet wings of a butterfly inside of me, the beginning of a transformation that would affect my view of the world, of those I loved and would come to love. In this birth, I had been reborn—as a mother.
That night was the first time I realized that a mother is not merely raising children—she is shaping souls. She is building God’s kingdom.
Scripture tells us in 1 John 4:8, “God is love.” And if our children are to learn who God is, then they must experience that love—not only in word, but in form. In our hands. In our voices. In our presence. In our being present.
Until you have taken on the full identity of what it means to be a Christian mother, you cannot fully train your children to be godly children.
If motherhood is meant to be a first window into the heart of God, then what happens when that window is left empty?
Our children become disconnected from love, God, and purpose.
We are witnessing a generational crisis of disconnection. Today’s children are more digitally connected and emotionally untethered than ever before. Screens glow brighter while love grows colder. I won’t bore you with the statistics, but they are staggering. In fact, the U.S. Surgeon General says that the instability and loneliness in children of this era has caused “unprecedented challenges” threatening not just the well-being of children, but their development.
Psychologists and educators alike are sounding the alarm:
“Children today are suffering from a lack of real presence—from emotionally attuned, physically available adults who are engaged with them in daily life.”
— Erica Komisar, psychoanalyst
“The number one predictor of a child’s well-being is the presence of a loving, consistent, and emotionally responsive caregiver.”
— Harvard Center on the Developing Child
Our children are not simply lonely. They are aching for connection—for someone to know them. God put that deep desire to know and be known in each of us, and a child cannot survive without it.
But this isn’t just a social issue. It is a spiritual one.
When the reflection of God’s love is dimmed in the earliest years of life, children struggle not only with who they are—but with whether they have a purpose, whether they are safe, and whether they are truly loved.
It is no small thing to be the first place a child encounters the reality of God.
And it is no small cost when that encounter is missed. I plead with you to be that window to our Heavenly Father, and let His love shine through you.
“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” — Deuteronomy 6:6–7
So, may God strengthen you to never let your children fall prey to the tsunami of loneliness, anxiety, depression, and disconnectedness among the youth of their generation. Tie them into God’s purpose with the cords of a mother’s love. Polish the mirror of your life—yes, the window of your life—so that they may clearly see the reflection of our Lord’s face through you.
And remember: every moment you give, every gentle word, every sacrifice unseen by the world but known to heaven, is forming the first image of God your children will ever know. Guard that calling with joy and with trembling, for through your love, eternity touches earth.
With all my heart,
Mom
