Dear Mamas,
I see you.
I see you weighted down with diaper bags and pacifiers and changes of clothes. I see you begging your babies for just one nap. I see you wanting someone to hold you because you’re so tired from holding needy hands.
I see you up at daybreak, making sure everybody has their homework in their backpacks and enough food in their lunch bags. I see you throughout the day, working hard, whether at an office or at home, trying to get it all done so you can be free for mothering duties the second you lay eyes on your children. I see the way you search Google and YouTube just so you can help your kids with schoolwork you don’t remember ever doing at their ages. I see you having the difficult conversations with doctors and teachers and coaches and other mamas.
I see you awake in the middle of the night, worrying about the issues no midnight turmoil can solve. I see your children’s burdens sitting squarely on your shoulders because you know a good mother helps her kids carry the heavy loads.
I see you wishing there was someone you could call to see if you’re doing an okay job or if you’ve got it all wrong. I see the fear in your eyes when mama-worries plague your heart. I see love in your eyes when your entire being is filled with pride over your baby’s accomplishments. I see ache on your face when you know there’s nothing you can do to heal your sons and daughters. I see you trying to get it all done when it all feels impossible.
I see you hiding in the bathroom, wiping away your tears so they won’t know you were crying. I see you smiling when you really want to bury yourself underneath the weight of bedcovers. I see you waiting by the phone with the nightstand-light still on until that child gets home a few minutes after curfew.
I see you wondering if they’ll ever grow up, and at the same time, wishing you could turn back time and start all over. I see you asking yourself where the last twenty years of your life went, knowing you’d do it all again.
I see you. And you’re a great mama.
Beautifully written, Rebekah! One of my greatest comforts is to imagine God as a “mother who comforts her children” (Isaiah 66:13). We’ve too often overlooked the feminine metaphors of God in Scripture. Applying your description of moms to God breathes fresh breath into possibilities, thinking it can be said of God: God is a great mama. Thanks again for giving me something to chew on. Shalom, sister.
Thanks, Garry. I can’t really see God as mother for the same reasons I’m struggling to believe he even exists: a good mother wouldn’t sit idly by and watch her child die of cancer. She would do everything within her power and means for her child to be healed. If she had the power to heal, she wouldn’t willingly sit by and watch her child suffer and die while offering up the explanation that bad things happen to good people and there’s a higher reason for it. I just can’t buy into that anymore.
I understand, Rebekah, I really do. As I’ve wrestled with the hurt of such things as you described perhaps, because of our Western, Enlightened understanding of God, we fail to consider God’s broken, aching, motherly heart over this as well. I no longer seek a philosophically satisfactory answer to natural or moral evil–I choose to view it through the God on a cross who completely entered into the hurt, alienation, anger, confusion and disbelief of it all. No pie in the sky, sweet by and by story for me. No, “it’s for the best” or “all things work for good” (which is a complete misunderstanding of that text) for me. I hear a crucified God say, “This sucks!…and I choose to fully embrace it with and for you.” Like you, I don’t buy the “there’s a higher reason” for it. Much suffering is gratuitous with no redeeming quality to it–it’s completely evil through and through. Your poignant post simply reminded me that, if God is motherly, then God, as a mother, is fully present in the crap of it all…a mother would do no different.
Please don’t read my reply as an argument–it has too many holes (as all arguments do). See it as someone who has benefited from your words. Someone who is grateful for your heart. Shalom, dear sister.