“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. These prototypes and shadows are scattered through creation, drawing our eyes and hearts toward Him. We glimpse His majesty in creation, in mountains and oceans, the stars and storms, but we first encounter His nature in relationship.
Every bond on earth was designed to show us something of His shape, His form and His essence. And the very first place a person comes to know His warmth, His nourishment and His comfort is through their mother. Though this is not the only stage in a child’s journey, it is the first. If our children are ever to come to know the strength of fatherhood, and the love of the Father above, then it must all begin in the embrace of their mother.
Helen, when I think of this truth, my heart turns in memory to the day you were born. I wrote about that moment years later in my book, A Time to Be Born, because it was really 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. Before I became a mother, I had lofty visions for my future. Perhaps I’d be a missionary. I could almost smell the exotic scents of Middle Eastern markets and hear the bustle of foreign cities. Perhaps I would serve God in various countries and in various ways…
As the climax of the [your] birth approached, the contractions took on a life of their own. Like grain in a mill, every mounting wave pulled me deeper into my labor. Clutching the wooden bedpost with my sweaty hand, I focused on Mom and matched my panting to hers. “Pant, pant, pant.” She panted out the word, fixing me with hazel eyes. How had she willingly done this ten times?
Dan scooted up beside me on our handmade, longleaf pine bed. Wrapping one arm around me, his whispered words drifted to me over a chasm of pain, “You can do it, honey. You’re doing so good.”
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 our words, but in tangible form. They must feel it through our hands, hear it in our voices, sense it in our presence and 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 the purpose He created them for.
We are witnessing a generational crisis of relational disconnection. The children of today’s world are more digitally connected and emotionally untethered than ever before. While screens glow brighter, family 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 even 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 lonely and 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.
This is both a social and spiritual crisis with potentially enormous consequences. When the reflection of God’s love is dimmed or absent in the earliest years of life, children struggle to know who they are and whether they have a purpose. They don’t feel safe, and lack the certainty of knowing they are truly loved.
It is no small thing to be the first place a child encounters the reality of God.
And the cost will not be small 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 Jesus’ face through you.
And remember that every moment you give, every word, every sacrifice that no one sees is forming the first image of God your children will ever see and feel. And God, in heaven, sees it all. So guard that calling with joy and awe, for through your love, eternity touches earth.
With all my heart,
Mom