In the Waiting: What Motherhood Teaches Us About Faith

Just as Veterans Day recognition cannot fully plumb the depths of the effects of battle on the soul of a soldier, neither can Mother’s Day fully plumb the depths of the effects of the journey to and through Motherhood on a mother. It, too, is often a battlefield—a faith battlefield won only through a mother’s determination to not give up and let go.

I’m not even sure there’s a woman’s seminar that directly speaks to the role of a mother, its challenges, and the responsibilities that come with those challenges.  

One seminar I would pay a small fortune to attend would be one on motherhood, led by the mothers in the Bible. I’m not sure if a week would be long enough to learn everything their stories teach us about mothering, about God, even about marriage, but I’d settle for a weekend.

The perfect Mother’s Retreat & Seminar—for Mothers in Waiting, Mothers in Heart, and Mothers in the Everyday Ordinary of Raising Children.

Many Christian women’s seminars advertise “resources to equip women to handle life’s difficulties while enriching their hearts.” Maybe they promise “raw testimonies, biblical teaching, and unforgettable moments of joy.” One particular seminar said the experience would be like “drinking from a fire hydrant of wisdom and knowledge.”

A retreat for women waiting to adopt, maybe even mothers giving up their babies to adoption. A retreat for women struggling with infertility, or women who have experienced the loss of a child, whether it ever drew breath or not. A retreat for mothers up to their elbows in the everyday ordinary of raising children, facing potty training challenges, spelling challenges, watching their children face hurdles in friendship, sports, faith, choices. A retreat for mothers in a hair-raising teen challenge. 

Just as God is not a one-dimensional God, neither is the record of His response to motherhood and its challenges. Over and over again, God hears the cry of the birth mothers, mothers through adoption, mothers in waiting, bereaved mothers, mothers who aren’t equipped to face the challenges on their doorsteps, mothers whose lambs have strayed.

Day 1: 

Maybe at 9 a.m. in Conference Room A: Infertility: Mothers in Waiting with Hannah, Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel 

At the same time in Conference Room B: Adoption with Jochebed and Pharoah’s daughter—how God answered the need of each.

In Conference Room C? For Mother’s who have lost children and need encouragement on how to find their way out of emptiness: Conversation with Naomi.

After a light lunch and a good stretch of the legs, the afternoon seminars begin at 1 p.m.

Conference Room A: Encouragement for mothers whose children are straying from God’s ways. Are you living through a teen challenge? If so, this is where you want to be: Rebecca, Samson’s Mother, the Prodigal’s Mother.

Conference Room B: How putting God first can redeem a sour family situation: Leah and Rachel (who just might be a little contentious about this discussion), and Hagar.

Conference Room C: The Importance of Giving your Children to the Lord: Hannah

The first evenings seminar will begin at 7 p.m.

Auditorium: Meddling Mothers: Understanding your responsibility in a God reveal commission: Sarah, Rebecca, Samson’s mother, Mary, and Elizabeth: When God gives you a heads up that He’s doing a work in you, it means trusting Him with the details and the timing. You don’t have to come up with a plan or manipulate circumstances to create the outcome He has revealed.

Day 2:

9 a.m. Morning Prayer with Hannah

1 p.m. The Power of Speaking Faith to the World; Pouring Out our Heartache to The Man of God: Speaker: The Shunammite Woman

Each of these women, each has impacted my personal mothering life. 

St. Augustine in The City of God points out that the only difference between the Christian and the Unbeliever is not the challenges we face, for we both face the same challenges. The difference is in who we face the challenge with (God with me) – and the hope and faith we carry into that challenge – because of whose we are.

I held one child in my arms, year after year — he grew — and month after month, I grieved. 48 months, 48 “No’s.” Desolation snowballed into a downward spiral that drained me physically, emotionally, spiritually.

Secondary infertility was my diagnosis: the inability to conceive after the first child. Sarah, Rebecca, Elizabeth, Rachel, Hannah, the barren woman — they became my soul sisters. I understood their cry — and I rejoiced in their answered prayers. I sat at their feet, looking for behavior solutions in their stories. . . because God heard their cries and answered their prayers – maybe not in the plot form they wanted, but He answered them in His best way.

Over and over the barren woman’s house was filled, probably because she opened herself up to relationship and reliance on God.

I mined these stories for clues to solve my problem. Because God had not given me what I asked for, I assumed it was a conditional behavior issue. God was waiting for me to behave a certain way before He would grant my request. I was like the mouse trying to find the magic button that released the cheese — and none of the buttons I pushed released my cheese.

To compound that, I was an obsessive thinker, constantly searching for solutions. Obsessive thinking starts on the outside — can I work harder, eat healthier, study more, be skinnier, find a new theory, a new treatment — all the solutions are outside based. Outside solution failure turns the obsessive thinker inside — maybe I am not good enough, do not pray enough, believe enough, or am not important enough to God.

But God does not work like that. God does not love conditionally. I am not the mouse to his cheese. God wanted a heart connection. Those bible stories? Meaningless without a God relationship. I knew what I thought I wanted, but without relationship with my Father, I could not know what He wanted for me. I had to take my mind off the plot and seek to know the author.

“Commit your way to the Lord, and trust in him, and he will do it.” (Psalm 25: 5, New Advent Bible)

A Christian friend, who was more intimate with God at that time, advised me during a particular moment of emotional crisis, “Ask Him to take the desire away if having another child is not His will.” I had to take everything off the table, so to speak — my dream, my desire.

“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42)

And, I did — I asked my Father to take the desire away — if this dream was not His dream for my life. Like Abraham’s willingness to give up Isaac, I needed to be more committed to His plan for my life, than my plan, my desire, my dream. Though at that time I did not realize how much He loved me, who I really was to Him, I gave Him my heart’s desire.

And He gave it back — abundantly. 

The season of infertility shepherded me closer to God. Often, it’s the challenges we cannot fix ourselves that send us to our knees and, yet, at the same time, running to our Father, which is where He wants us to be—by Him, with Him, trusting Him, telling Him with what we are struggling.

The one common thread in the stories of the biblical women I want to speak at The Perfect Mother’s Retreat & Seminar—for Mothers in Waiting, Mothers in Heart, and Mothers in the Everyday Ordinary of Raising Children—the one common thread between them all is the living in the wait of the prayer sent out, which just might be the most important part of living.

Maybe what mother’s need this year is a good heart to heart with these women who have been on the same battlefield she is standing on now—and hear the stories of their successes, failures, overcoming, and God someone how making it all work out.

As Mother’s Day draws nearer, let us be encouraged by what these women’s stories say not just about their motherhood journey but ours, too. Next week: Mothers-in-Waiting: What God reveals in Hannah, Sarah, Rebecca, and Elizabeth’s Infertility Journey.