Much has been written about mothers. Greeting cards, books, and songs have celebrated the virtues and influence of mothers. Sadly, much has been said, too, blaming mothers for desertion, wrong teaching, negligence, and damaging modeling.
I, too, have written to honor one of the best mothers a child could have who taught my sister and me to love people, notice and embrace life, and walk uprightly before God.
But here, I would like to celebrate the joy of being a mother.
When Bill and I were in the first two years of our marriage, we had several conversations about how good our life together was and how having children might challenge or ruin our insulated joy. We lived in a sweet little house Bill’s parents rented to us just across the driveway from their family home. I was finishing college, doing my student teaching, and taking the last classes in literature, French, and sociology.
Bill was teaching English at our local high school. We had begun writing songs together, and he was also directing the choir and leading worship at a nearby church. By the second year of our marriage, I was also teaching French and English at the same high school. What could be better? Would a baby interrupt this bliss?
Then in December at the end of our second year, Suzanne entered our world. And, yes, she interrupted everything! As I have said many times since, we can make our plans, but God is in the interruptions.
To know that I held a piece of eternity in my arms was life-altering. And to realize that what this baby thought and felt and believed about life and God was largely my responsibility, was both sobering and exhilarating. That this tiny wonder was totally dependent on us for everything brought an abrupt halt to self-absorption! We would now be on call 24/7. Her cries were a call to read her signals and to find the wisdom to interpret them.
And then there were three. No matter how I tried to be prepared for motherhood, I found my capacity to know what our children needed was insufficient—and would get more so the older they got. This made me seek wisdom from others who had more experience. Motherhood was a call to humility: to admit what I did not know, to listen to wiser input, to consistently ask God to give me what I lacked.
I remember thinking that my quiet meditation time was over. I wouldn’t have time to enrich my life with devotional study and prayer. Oh, but what I didn’t know was that with our babies’ first words came wisdom that punctuated everything I’d ever learned from my devotional life. From the mouths of babes and sucklings...
Comments like, “Mommy did you know that rainbows live at Easter?” Or when finally giving up a pacifier, “Here, mommy. Take this thing. It’s empty.” As our children grew so did their questions, questions if I was honest, I’d asked myself. And their insights sometimes took my breath away.
Now that they are adults with children of their own, they are my peers and many times my advisors. How motherhood has stretched me, blessed me, challenged me, changed me would take not just this short essay, but books.
I can only say this Mother’s Day that next to serving the Lord and walking life’s journey with the man who loves me, being a mother has been my life’s greatest gift from God. The three children that made me a mother have also made me pray more, laugh more, cry more, learn more, and grow more than all of the rest of my experiences put together. And of all the honors or titles I could ever be given in a lifetime, the greatest by far is the stand-tall-title—Mother.
