5 Days to Discover the Mother God Made You to BeSample

SO GOD MADE A MOTHER STRONG Strong Enough to Be Weak "He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV) I could hear forks clinking against the Spode Christmas dishes in the other room, voices floating over to the staircase where I sat, sobbing. It was Christmas Eve, usually my favorite annual family gathering. But this year, it was all wrong. I’d just come from the hospital, where my 37-year-old husband had been diagnosed with life-threatening bacterial meningitis. I had been awake for two days, had barely eaten, and was terrified, overwhelmed, and six months pregnant with our fifth child. Not exactly the stuff of Hallmark Christmas movies, right? I’d been crying for a few minutes away from everyone when I heard my mom’s voice. “Where’s Carolyn?” she asked. A few seconds later, she and my dad appeared in the front hall, where they discovered their crumpled daughter on the steps. They immediately wrapped me in their arms, cocooning me between them as I ugly cried. For so many hours, I’d been strong—for my husband, for my unborn baby, for my kids worrying about their daddy. But adrenaline and a Snickers bar can only last so long. I was empty. I needed someone to hold me, to let me feel any and everything, to love me through. My parents did that for me that Christmas Eve without a moment’s hesitation or judgment. They didn’t tell me what to feel—in fact, I don’t recall them saying much of anything. They were simply there, holding me up in every sense of the word. It’s what we do as parents, as mothers. We wear our children’s pain. We’re strong when they feel weak. We’re constant and available, with arms open wide and silent prayers constantly streaming from our hearts. God loans mothers strength beyond our understanding because He is strong beyond our understanding. He tells us, Go ahead. Feel any and everything. I love you without hesitation or qualifiers . I will carry you and sustain you. And when we feel like we can’t go on, when the days are too hard or the circumstances are too much, He pulls us in close and lets us simply be. Real strength, after all, isn’t in power or force or noise. It’s in the quiet. It’s in the breaths between words. It’s in the turning from ourselves, the honesty of our needs. My husband made a full recovery, a miracle we’re grateful for every day. But going through that valley as a wife, a mother, and a daughter forced me to surrender in ways I hadn’t understood I needed to before. We don’t always have to be strong, at least not in the way the world wants to define strength. God is strong enough, and His love is wide enough—don’t hide on the stairs alone. Motherhood brings with it all sorts of moments that test us and stretch us in ways we can’t predict—but a mother digs deep and fights back and never, ever gives up. —Leslie Means