Hormones, mood swings, skin breakouts, fluctuation in weight—don’t all these things point to the fact that I was made to be a mother? So why must I suffer through these things without the ultimate result of my own child?
God must not love me or must think that I’m not ready to be a mother.
There will always be something I’ve missed out on.
Am I a second-rate Christian? Because my so-and-so says the highest calling for a woman is to be a mother.
I’m getting older and my opportunity to have my own children is getting shorter!
I’m just going to avoid all celebration of motherhood, whether Mother’s Day, birth announcements, baby showers and the like, because I can’t be one myself.
I’m right at that stage in life where the majority of my friends from high school and college are all having their own children. In fact, my some of my students are mothers. And as much as I would really like to say that I am in control of my emotions 100% of the time, it would be a lie. And if you are also circumstantially or physically unable to have children, has one
more of these statements/questions crossed your mind?
May I be blunt—they are wrong! And I’ve thought every single one of them. Their end is dissatisfaction in my God and the good gifts He so graciously gives. Their end is bitterness. Their end is sin.
But can I deny that I greatly desire to be a mother? No—I get it every time I’m with my nieces and nephew, every time another friend announces they’re pregnant, every time I pick up a really great children’s book and think “I want to read this to my own child one day.”
And I know that this desire is not a sin. God gave us that beautiful longing to be a mother. I don’t believe it is a wrong desire at all. And I shouldn’t consider God unjust for not fulfilling that desire at the present. He is always teaching, whether through making us wait or throwing us in the deep end of motherhood. He is always sanctifying us, mothers and not-mothers alike.
So, may I leave you with a few Biblical truths that have encouraged me to have an appropriate view of my circumstances, to combat Satan’s lies, to be gracious to and truly joyful for those who are mothers?
God promises to give us all we need. Beyond necessities, He graciously gives good gifts that are entirely undeserved and that He is not bound by promise to give us. And the end goal of those gifts is to bring praise to God the Giver. A child is a gift from the Lord, not a need that He promises to provide. And if the Lord, sometime down the road, chooses to give me the gift of children, I ought to purpose in my heart to praise and glorify God and steward that gift well, as I should with every good gift He gives. (Philippians 4:19, Psalm 103, James 1:17, 1 Peter 4:8-11)
God is in the process of sanctifying each of us, and He uses our circumstances, both highs and lows, to make us more like Christ. For some of us without children, it may be learning to be patient on God’s timing or to be satisfied in Him alone. For others who have children, it may be discovering that your children don’t bring ultimate satisfaction or that the strength needed for godly mothering is not found within yourself but in God. And those aren’t the only possible lessons we learn by being a mother or not. I will seek to learn what God wants me to learn where I am right now. (Philippians 1:6, Philippians 2:13, Galatians 5:22-23)
God shows no favoritism—so why should I. I am so easily tempted to favor people who are like me. But that’s not how it works. I ought to love all as Christ does. So I should rejoice with those who rejoice. Rejoice that God is giving that woman a child, pray for her as she’s about to learn more about her human limitations, pray for her to be a mother that brings glory to God. And pray that I never fall into covetousness over her motherhood. (James 2:8-9, Romans 12:15, Exodus 20:17)
Comments