5 Days to Discover the Mother God Made You to BeSampel

SO GOD MADE A MOTHER TENDER

Now What?

"I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun!"
Isaiah 43:19 (NLT)

It’s funny now, looking back on those first few days with our first baby. We were practically babies ourselves, my husband and I—just 23 and 24 years old. As we walked out of the sixth-floor maternity ward that hot July afternoon in a postpartum haze, I almost expected someone to meet us at the elevator and say with a laugh, “Psych! You can’t leave with that baby–—you don’t know the first thing about being parents!”

Of course, no one did that. We drove baby Meredith home in the backseat of our Honda Accord to our tiny one-bedroom apartment, plunked her car seat down on the floor, and wondered, What now?

As mothers, we’re babies, too, at least at first. There’s just so much we don’t know. You can read all the books and do all the Googling and buy all the right gear, but nothing fully prepares you for the reality of a child in your care, for an actual human person depending on you for literal life.

And you know what? God knows you’ll be exactly there in that moment, and He extends you an invitation. He sees you rocking a newborn or comforting a child with a bad dream, and He whispers for you to look beyond your own self, beyond your own understanding. He invites you to rest, to tell Him how you feel, to find strength in His loving arms.

Because God does something to the heart of a woman when she becomes a mother: He softens it in new, mysterious, unbelievably beautiful ways. Like a sponge under a steady stream of warm water, he fills the gaps with emotion, wonder, curiosity, tenderness, hope, and faith. He created you to be the mother for your children, and He never stops refining you in that calling.

In all the moments of motherhood, God is making you new, even when you don’t feel it. Even when you don’t see it. Even when you’re eyeing the elevator, waiting for someone to call your bluff.

Your heavenly Father delights in you, baby heart and all.

These children are the borrowed souls in your sanctuary of space and time—and you get to love them.