More often than not, I’m scared to be a mother. It’s a lot of pressure to take on the responsibility of the lives of others, to make sure they are good people, and prepare them for life. I have four lives that belong to me, so technically I am outnumbered in my home, and let’s be honest, children can be so mean! Their ages are 16, 11, 5, and 2. Though as a mother it’s natural to talk about your children, who they are, their responsibilities, but…not today. Today’s lesson is about parenthood and motherhood. So, here’s to the mothers!
Just A Woman with a Child
“Because I was wrestling with my own demons, I was not a mother, I was just… a woman with children.”
Shauni
It’s easy to say that I became a mother at the age of 18, but we have already discussed that perversion is the act of altering something or someone from its original state or intentions, so when I became a mother, I had not been a mother the way God intended me to be. In truth, God seeks godly children (Malachi 2:15) and it is our responsibility to make them so, but we will get to that later. Because I was wrestling with my own demons, I was not a mother, I was just… a woman with children.
I know that sounds harsh, but it’s true. I was a teenager, battling with hurt and anger and the effects of my childhood. It affected the relationships and company I kept and pursued. When I bore my first-born, I was not prepared. My mother took us in, and I didn’t even have a car seat until the day my daughter was born. When we arrived home from the hospital, my daughter and I slept on the living floor until my mother, in her love and excitement brought home a bassinet and things that she needed. Without the help of my family and church family that loved me, I would have had nothing, but anger didn’t let me stay. I sought the company and solace of men.
This path led me straight into my first physically abusive relationship. He was manipulative, a liar, and a predator who sought to devour women. I was in my first apartment, just me and my daughter living in Trenton, NJ when he came along. He moved in, quit his job in NY to live in my apartment full time. I love him so that was perfectly fine right? We all know that was not it. He was so sweet initially, but that’s what a womanizer does, and I was a broken woman at the age of 22, looking for love and validation and when I got pregnant with his child, he was completely different of course. I got you now! I saw what I was used to which was my definition of love in the form of toxicity, abuse, and anger. I’ve had sprained arms and wrists, a swollen nose, I’ve been tied up and gagged left to “think about my actions,” thrown out of my own home carrying nothing by my baby and a blanket with a dog and my oldest daughter at my side, kicked, and my head slammed into a door. He even brought other women into my home.
You may be asking, what does this have to do with me having children… EVERYTHING! My oldest daughter saw a lot. She experienced the trauma of watching her mother be abused and experienced the wrath of an abusive man and now my second child had an abusive father. Escaping that relationship led me to two more toxic relationships. Without healing, without God, the enemy will keep you in the same cycles, but I am grateful that God at least wouldn’t let the enemy kill me. After my third child was born, her father (the 3rd father) once dragged me by my hair and placed my loaded gun in my mouth over an argument about a burrito. I’m not kidding, a burrito. He put a loaded gun in my face a second time over another petty argument and threw food on me. My oldest daughter saw and heard some of the fights. I had been choked and hit with a folded chair. Though not everything was not seen, it’s in the atmosphere. I did my best to hide what I was going through, but some things were inevitable. One time she woke up from her sleep and saw him on top of me in a fight, and she asked me if I wanted her to hit him and I begged her in my eyes and a simple shake of the hand not to. I didn’t want her to become his target. I wanted the focus to remain on me.
By the time my third child was born, I vowed never again. I learned to say enough is enough, but not everything goes away overnight. I still hadn’t sought God fully. I started to but I knew I needed more. My two older children were now battling with rejection and perversion themselves. My oldest child now angry, hurt, and insecure, lacking the consistency of a father figure also sought comfort and solace in boys. My second child has now become the direct victim of her father’s abuse, (which we have battled in court for the last 10 years of my daughter’s life). My fourth child came and as I grew and changed, my oldest daughter became angry with me, because she felt that I had offered her younger siblings a side of me she didn’t get. I have cried and pleaded with my two oldest children for their forgiveness because I did not protect them, because I could not protect myself.
I failed as a mother because I didn’t know what a mother was. I didn’t know how to be one so here on this journey, I am becoming “a mother,” and not just a woman with children.
God’s Intentions for Parenting
We all know that God is the true example of a parent. There are scriptures of him referring to us as his children (2 Corinthians 6:18, 1 John 3:1-2). God made us in his image so let’s break that down in parenting. God loves us and he disciplines us. In Hebrews he compares his discipline to that of a father disciplining his children and in Isaiah, he compares himself to the comfort of a mother. In 2 Timothy, we are told that the word of God is used to teach, rebuke, correct, and train, so it’s safe to say, God as a parent teaches, rebukes, corrects, trains, loves, and disciplines us. So much so, as intentional as God is, I find it interesting that in Deuteronomy, God links loving God with all of our hearts with parenting, instructing us to teach our children to do the same.
We are to our children, what God is to us. We stand in his place until our children are able to be held responsible for their relationship alone, and we are their example as God is our example. God literally tells us to do the same for our children.
- Love
- Discipline
- Instruct
- Dedicate
- Comfort
- Nurture
- Be an example.
Titus 2:4 calls us to love our children and Proverbs 22:6 and Ephesians 6:4 uses the words train and instruct, but train is not a simple word. Train means to discipline, to dedicate, and to nurture. Instruct is to educate. The entire bible is God’s dedication to us as a parent and his instructions for us.
Motherly Examples
So, we got what a parent is supposed to do, but what makes a mother special? Examples of mothers in the bible are quite amazing to me because we see some true motherly experiences in the Word of God! God gave us great examples of motherhood and it almost makes me cry, because I was so far from everything a mother should innately be, however, I was comforted in knowing I wasn’t the first mother to experience abuse, being broke, abandonment, loss, pain, and sadness.
Jochebed loved her son Moses so much she operated in faith to keep him safe. Hannah operated in faith to become a mother; praying so hard because of the abuse of her husband’s other wife, that they thought she was drunk. Bathsheba must have been something special. After David basically killed her husband and had her sent to him, she had to have become a well-respected, yet compassionate woman. We see Bathsheba mourn for the loss of her first baby because David did what he did. If they mourned, that means they had to have known she was pregnant, so I can only imagine it being a miscarriage or stillbirth of some sort. She has other children, and her son Solomon becomes the king. Adonijah went to her to ask for her help to speak to her son the king. She replied with confidence, like ” yeah sure I’ll speak to the king.” Influence much? Ma’am walked into the room, and her son, the king, stood and bowed to her! She had her own seat on the right side of the throne. She said I ask one thing, and don’t tell me no, and before she could ask the question, he said I will not tell you no. It didn’t matter what it was. Now what happened after that is something different but don’t focus on that right now. (1 Kings chapter 2)
Mary. You can’t talk about motherhood in the bible without talking about Mary. She was so calm and patient. When the angel told Mary she was having a baby, without sex, and he will be called the Son of God, Mary was like “ok cool.” Not my reaction! Excuse me Gabriel, you want me to do what?!?! Being pregnant is exhausting. Being a mother is a lot! I can only imagine the emotions of having to travel pregnant and then soon after birth I have to pack up my son because somebody trying to kill him. Even Mary showed us that we as mother’s don’t always know what we are doing. She lost Jesus for three whole days! They left him in Jerusalem and walked a whole day away before they realized he was not with them!
Naomi lost her husband and two sons and became bitter. By the end of her story, it was her faith, her love, instruction, and dedication to her daughter-in-law Ruth that led to her restoration and blessing. Hagar bore a son to Abraham, but she was not his wife, Sarah was. So when Sarah, out of anger of seeing the son said send the slave and child away, Abraham did so. Hagar went into the wilderness with her son and when she thought he could die she sobbed at the thought of watching it happen. As a mother, I could only imagine. She was a slave who was told to have Abraham’s baby because Sarah could not, and now I have the baby and you kick me out?!? It was Hagar’s faith… a slave woman, a single mother, with no husband, left stranded, that led to her being the first person in the bible to be visited and comforted by an angel of God. She was also the first person to give God a name… “El Roi” she called him, because he saw her. (Genesis 16 and 21)
I say all that to say, mothers were the epitome of faith and dedication as God is dedicated to us. In every motherly experience of abuse, loss, abandonment, sadness… You never saw fear, you saw faith and sacrifice. God blessed mothers if even through their children. It’s not like we didn’t see the strength and blessings of single mothers too. Eunice and Lois, the mother and grandmother to Timothy had to have raised Timothy without a man in the house. Paul refers to him as his own son, though you learn that it wasn’t actually his son. In the quick mentions of Eunice and Lois, you learn that all that Timothy was as a man was because of these “women of sincere faith.” We know how God intends for us to be as parents, but what makes a mother different? Faith, and comfort. It was faith that made barren mothers have children, faith in God that kept Mary calm, and faith that called Jochebed to send her son Moses off to save his life at the risk of her own. Faith that led Naomi to her blessing through Ruth. Faith and obedience that led Hagar go back to have Abraham’s son. We are all supposed to have faith, but a mother’s faith just hits different. Mother’s do not operate in fear. Proverbs 31:26 says that her mouth speaks wisdom, and we know that to obtain wisdom, we must fear the Lord. Instruction is on a woman’s tongue. We are comforters, that even God even says he too comforts us as a mother comforts her child.
The Blessing of Mothers
Jesus loved his mother. He was dying on the cross and he was worried about his mother. Solomon if nothing else respected his mother. Proverbs 31 doesn’t just explain who we are as women, but also wives and mothers. We are trustworthy, wise, unafraid, we are strength (it’s mentioned twice), resourceful, hardworking, compassionate, honest, and most of all, God-fearing. She is the first one up in the morning taking care of the house making sure she oversees the operations of her home. Many women do good deeds, but a mother, a wife, a God-fearing woman! surpasses them all!
I could not do or be what I didn’t know and possess. When I first bore children, I was just a woman with babies, but to become a mother, I had to first fear God to learn to operate as he intended; in wisdom and learn all that I had to. The good thing it, what the devil meant for evil, he will turn it around for our good. I love my children, more than anyone will ever know, but now I must operate in faith, strength, and wisdom to:
- Love
- Discipline
- Instruct
- Dedicate
- Comfort
- Nurture
- Be an example.
I didn’t do what God had intended for me to as a mother, back then, but now I pray against all that I invited into my children. I provoked them to anger and did not bring them up in the instruction of the Lord. And through my love of God and my children I take on the full responsibility, and you should too if you are a parent, according to 2 Timothy 3:16, to teach, rebuke, correct, and train in righteousness, so that our children may become the men and women of God that are equipped for their good works. So, here’s to becoming… a mother!
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