A Call to MOTHER

MOTHER'S DAY.....a day to honor and celebrate nurturing, giving life and protecting... Mothers...they pour themselves selflessly into our lives to help us become all we were meant to be. In thinking of this I realize that as a little girl this is what I dreamed of being. I loved to think about what I would name my chidren and what they would look like. Little girls have this within them.

I have witnessed this time and time again in the girls I take care of. They mother very naturally. One little girl I have follows me around daily, correcting the others, reminding me of things forgotten, and pointing out what needs to be done next. She loves to kiss the others owies. Mothering is within her.

To mother is a gift God has placed within women. Our bodies were designed to give birth. We bleed when we give birth and the "bleeding" never stops as we cry to the Lord for our children in prayer and our hearts rise and fall with their triumphs and hurts.

To mother, I believe, is to partner with the Lord in bringing life out of the people around us. It is a holy calling and one not to be taken lightly. It is about seeing who the people around us truly are and calling them to walk this out.

There is a generation crying out to be mothered. This is a cry within the body of Christ. I remember as a young teenager looking up to older teens and young women in my church. Watching them worship, listening to them pray....thinking, one day I want to be like that. I hear this cry consistently...it says would someone please show me HOW! Mentor me. It encourages me because it shows there is a godly generation emerging who wants to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord...they simply need some guidance along the way and someone who believes in them.

This month we celebrate mothers. BUT I want to challenge our thinking about mothers. A MOTHER is more than a woman who has physically birthed a child. We also want to honor women who have chosen to mother children not their own. There are so many who pour their lives out through Sunday School, one-on-one mentoring, home visits and more. Your love and sacrifice do not go unnoticed. These women are constantly giving birth to new life in those around them.

I left home when I was 18 and for 17 years was not geographically near my mom. She mothered me from a distance. She told me something she prayed that I feel is huge. She prayed for other women to come into my life to be spiritual mothers to me to fill in the gaps that she could not fill. And then she looked around for younger women in her church who needed her to do the same for them.

Regardless of where you are, you can be a spiritual mother. Someone needs what you have. You might think you have to be a certain age before you can do this. I watch the young women in our church constantly mentoring the girls who are coming up just behind them. Can I say that no matter our age, as women, we have something to offer?
There is always something to give and also to receive.

Whether you have physically birthed a child or not, God has blessed you as a woman with a gift to mother. It is a gift to speak life into others, to draw life out of them, and to love and inspire those around you to be what they were individually created to be.