I just didn’t feel loved. I didn’t feel loved by the maternal figures in my life. And I began to wonder, could God fill that hole? Could God fill that mother hole for me?

When I began to invite the Holy Spirit into my heart, He began to reveal the maternal heart and the heartbeat of God for me. You know, in the beginning, before the creation of the world when everything was void and when everything was a big, like mess, the Spirit of the Lord hovered and He separated the darkness from the light. I felt like the Spirit of God came into my life and just separated that darkness for me, and He began to reveal Himself. This light began to come through that illuminated all this wounding and dark places in my life. 

When I turned 40, my whole life just fell apart. I woke up, and I found myself just curled up in fetal position on the floor, not wanting to face another day. Everything that I knew about God, about faith, everything just went out the window. I woke up that morning wondering, God, why did You create me? But in that desperate moment, I did pray a prayer. And I said, “God, if You’re up there somewhere on a cloud, You might be busy with someone else, but I really need You here right now. Because I simply cannot feel You, I can’t hear You, but I want You to show up in my life. And I believe that simple and honest prayer was enough for the God of the universe to come down into my mess. He just opened up my life and He opened up my heart to receive love. 

You know, the God I knew from the past, it was this kind of punitive God, high and mighty, He resides up in heaven and you know, I was so distant. But now I began to experience a God who came down to me in my pit. God began to reveal to me that I had a deep core mother wound. I just didn’t feel loved. I didn’t feel loved by the maternal figures in my life. And I began to wonder, could God fill that hole? Could God fill that mother hole for me? I began to look at scripture and I began to see that God has a mother’s heart for us.

In Hosea 13:8, you know, the picture of God as a mother bear, spoke to me very deeply. I began to have these visual imagery of God as a mother bear and being protective. And so I began to experience that type of fierce, protective love. In Isaiah 49:15, “Can a mother forget the infant at her breast walk away from the baby she bore? But even if mothers forget, I will never forget you, never.” In Hebrews 13:5 God says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” These scriptures begin to come alive.

I began to think about those times when I had to stay up all night with my babies. I had chronically ill kids when they were little. I had to stay up with both of them. There were times when I was feeding one and staying up, and making sure the other one was breathing and staying alive. I mean, it was just nightmarish and this went on for several years during my early parenting years. But God reminded me, just like you stayed up, and you watched over your babies, I have been staying up all these years, and even while you were crying, and even while you were hurting, whether it was emotionally or physically. All that time when you experienced abandonment and rejection and when you experienced illness and infertility and all this stuff, I was watching over you. Just like you were watching over your babies. I do not sleep, I do not slumber. These words were so powerful to me. 

So I believe God gave me the privilege of motherhood, to reveal to me what it looked like to not sleep for over a decade. I’m blessed to be in this space and understand that the God who never sleeps nor slumbers, He’s got my back. In the middle of the night, when all seems utterly chaotic, day will break and no situation will be forever. I just know that firsthand. It almost felt like God just downloaded this peace to my heart. That my despair, you know? That core mother wound and that abandonment that I was feeling–I almost felt like He just supernaturally showed me and brought to my memory, these verses and imagery of how God is that mother too. He’s our Father, but He is also a mother to the motherless, you know, in a figurative sense. 

When we are first in this world, mom’s arms are where we go for comfort. We run to mom when this world feels dangerous and when this world feels unsafe, whether it’s falling and bruising yourself or you feel emotionally hurt or whatever, or somebody said something to you. But unfortunately, I didn’t experience that comfort. My mom did her best. And when I think back, the generations before us, they did their best and you can only give what you have received. If there is hurt and wounding and brokenness in generations past and if it isn’t dealt with or if it isn’t healed, we can pass it on to our children and our children’s children. But if those stories are healed, and we experience restoration and redemption, you will pass the blessing to the next generation, to the third and the fourth generation and that’s God’s promise. 

So mom wounds, like mom supposed to be associated with cookies and nurture and baking and sweet things. You know? Nobody wants to talk about this. It’s there. We can either face our wounding, or we can just succumb to it and go under. But we do have a choice to make. And when we begin to take that first step, and just really call out to Him, He will meet us right where we are. There is no doubt in my mind that He will.

Jesus came to give us life and life in abundance. And when we talk about life in abundance, it doesn’t necessarily mean material things, although God does bless His children. But you know, for me to experience that abundance in my emotion, in my soul, in my mind, that abundance of you know, just peace, all of that happened from that defining moment on the floor. I have embraced my identity, my true identity and purpose that the Lord has set apart for me since that moment. That was a breaking moment, but that was also my making moment. And I want to encourage anybody out there who’s listening, that you matter to God. You are put on this earth with a unique purpose that only you can fulfill. He sees you, you matter. Your story matters, and He can use your redeemed story for your good and His glory.

The story doesn’t own me anymore. I own my redeemed story. And I want to share that with the world.