God created mothers. He gets a say on how motherhood should be conducted. Here are the ways I understand God's invention and sustaining work of motherhood.
• Women are mothers. God blessed women with the gift of motherhood. Whether our children arrived by birth or adoption, He gave us the responsibility to nurture new life into adulthood. I take this responsibility seriously. I understand not everyone has a mother who took their role seriously. I cry and empathize with them. I also think that we can do for the next generation what was not done to us. I believe that regardless of what we received from human beings who failed us, we have the capacity to love unconditionally and to be the conductor of the supreme gift of motherhood.
• Motherhood is Biblical and it is also cultural. I live in a country where motherhood is seen from one lens. This one angle gets mistaken for God's law to all mothers. It also gets preached as "every mother must act one way." Here is the problem: God so loved the world. God created mothers who birthed children in Japan and Jamaica. Their realities, their way of expressing love and caring for their families does not look like what I read in motherhood books written here in the States. I've seen mothers who were raised abroad valiantly raise their children to know and love God within their cultural context with the Bible as their main textbook. If you compare their approach to what I see some Anglo women teaching, you will think these multiethnic Godly Christian women are wrong. I can go on and on but here is the truth: motherhood is cultural and God is okay with it.
• Motherhood and sacrifice go hand in hand. In 2020, I noticed that despite the hardships we all went through, some women did not want to embrace the sacrificial part of motherhood. Basically, I saw mothers who wanted to sublet motherhood. They didn't want to do what it takes to care for the children God gave them. I believe you can feel your feelings, you can complain, you can feel anxious, you can feel overwhelmed and still own the fact that motherhood requires sacrifice because love is sacrificial. I'm not speaking about abandoning our feelings because we have feelings for a great reason: God gave them to us. What I am speaking about is the abandonment of our responsibilities as mothers. That we can't do friends. We are in charge. God put us in charge. He didn't mean for us to be perfect but to sacrificially give of the wealth God has put inside of us. In our darkest days, God has filled mothers with love and strength beyond measure. Don't let anyone distract you from the fact that you will have to sacrifice. When you give your best as a service to God, He Himself will reward you.
Motherhood is a supreme gift from God. I hope that you are finding in God the source of our strength and renewal.
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