Mothers
Musings from the Garden
By Peggy Wyar
I have been a mother for almost 40 years. I had a mother. I have heard and read numerous books and sermons and opinions on the importance of mothers. After being on this earth over 60 years I might think there is nothing new for me to learn about motherhood.
I would be wrong.
Every day I am faced with the beauty and courage of mothers. I have a friend who has chosen (once again) to bring more children into her home so she could shower them with love as their foster mother. She may not have a permanent role in their lives, but that doesn’t stop her from caring and pouring into their lives for the time that she will have them. The way she delights in them is beautiful to see.
I have another friend who has taken in a neighbor girl who needed a safe home. After some time, she and her husband began moving towards adopting her. As this mother learns to care for this new addition, I see her heart expanding and growing in God inspired ways. What a joy to watch this family become brand new.
Other women around me show their mother’s hearts by spending time with teens or caring for younger ones so their friends can get a break. These women have such mothers’ hearts that to NOT have children around might feel stifling to them. They need recipients for their overflowing love.
Other mothers I have known have expressed amazing courage as they have raised and cared for their special needs children. The patience and love they showed them was amazing. God graced them for the children He had given them. These mothers loved unwaveringly as they went about the task of doing so much for their needy children (and their whole family). I was reminded through their example that God’s love is reliable and steady as well, no matter how challenging the child.
I have known mothers whose daughters or sons have cut them out of their lives. My heart has broken with theirs as they have poured out their pain. They have prayed and agonized over their absent children, loving them the only way they were allowed by the circumstance. As I watched them keep loving through their anguish, I pictured Jesus on the cross, loving and forgiving us in spite of the shame and pain. How Father God must long for His lost children!
I have watched with joy as my daughters became mothers. They are experiencing all the love and delights that being a mom brings. They have also felt the crushing of sorrow and heartache as they helplessly watched their children face challenges of their own. A mothers’ choice to love wholeheartedly is not without cost.
It costs us, as mothers, to care for our little ones who may not want to acknowledge our care for them, who may reject us at some point, who may choose to dishonor us, or who may lie about us. We may be yelled at, embarrassed by, and ignored by the ones who made us mothers. And isn’t that what Father God has endured since the beginning of time?
As I consider motherhood during this month of May, I turn to God’s Word to read of His parental heart. He never gave up on His children and neither should any of us.
Isaiah 66:13
As a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.”
Isaiah 30:18
Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
For the Lord is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!
Hosea 11:1-4
“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
But the more they were called, the more they went away from me.
They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images.
It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms;
but they did not realize it was I who healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love.
To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek,
and I bent down to feed them.”
Hosea 14:4
“I will heal their waywardness and love them freely,
for my anger has turned away from them.”
1 John 3:1-3
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.”