You Are Invited in // Come and FeastSample

What it Means to Mother

My love, do you hear that music, the one where we dance and your steps are light and you swing?

You mother in the quiet places and in the moments when it is loud and it feels impossible to hear. You mother in the choices, the choices to love beyond yourself, the sacrifice that comes with friendship, the nurturing of an arm across a shoulder, the carrying of beauty within you, the permission for Me to care for you, to pour love into your heart so that the ripple of My love continues.

A waterfall begins with a drop, and then a cascade, a drifting through quiet places, a collection until the drops pour past, all together. Mothering happens in the combination of Me holding you in My hands and letting My fingers open a bit to let you pour out what I give.

You can only mother from what I give.

Mothering is a collection of hopes for the future, a belief in good things and the willingness to go to the hard places for those you love. It is the shepherding of children, the gathering of expectation for a future that is to come.

It is faith in possibility for people beyond yourself.

To mother is to press in and give out and never give up. It is to hold on tight and let go, all at once. It is to walk beside and listen close and not fall away, even though the pain comes and it is hard to stay.

To mother is to stay.

And the staying isn’t what you think it looks like sometimes. It is the supporting of the one you hold close while believing it isn’t always you who knows the way.

In mothering, without Me, you don’t know the way.

To mother is to trust and laugh and cry and wave good-bye. It is to come again, despite rejection. It is to provide, when you feel you have nothing to give. It is to look beyond yourself for strength and feel frail and helpless and fall and believe that you will be caught so that you can lift your knees and see what is before you, the Son.

Mothering is not just about bearing a child. It can be that but it is not just that. You mother through loving whom I bring your way. Come on, daughter, look whom I bring.