Mothers Need to be Mothered

One of the times a woman most needs a mother is when she becomes a mother. Many women erroneously think the need is primarily for the mother's experience. While that experience is important, what is more needful is found in Webster's definition of mother, "maternal tenderness or affection."

The care the young mother provides for her child is a joy, but also a serious task and it times feels quite overwhelming. Most mothers alternate between feeling competent and knowledgeable one day and completely inadequate the next. She needs to know that a mother is there for her as she rides this emotional roller-coaster of tremendous responsibility. One young mother expressed it this way: "Don't forget that I am your child just because the baby came along!"

It is my joy to be in “mother-to-a-mother” relationships with both the daughter I raised and the daughter my son married. This season of life has drawn us closer together than anything else and I realize we are bridging our way to the future as we lay down planks of love and respect. I am also grateful for the other women who pour into their lives. It is not possible for them to have too much "maternal tenderness or affection" and I have great affection for those who love my children. My girls are each five hours away in opposite directions. The pain of the distance I am from them is lessened by knowing that other godly women are loving them as a "mother."

As a child, I remember girlfriends who had nurturing personalities. Looking back, they seemed to have a kind of "mothering" nature at a very young age. I also remember teenage girls who babysat regularly and looked forward to having babies of their own. I was neither of these. It was not until my first child was placed in my arms that I was aware of any nurturing aspect of myself. Even still, I have girlfriends who never had biological children but are some of the most nurturing women I have ever known.

Women by nature are relational human beings and God has put in us the desire and ability to nurture. Different life events and circumstances may cause us to become aware of this innate characteristic at varying times in life, but I believe it is a God given part of what makes us distinctly women. Mothers nurture and those who nurture, in a sense, mother.

In His infinite wisdom and according to His perfect plan, God made us nurturers for a purpose. If you are without a daughter, or maybe, like me, your daughters live far away, look around you. There is a young mother who has lost her mother, her mother lives far away, or maybe her mother just never had what it took to mother her. She needs you. The only requirement is God's love in you flowing to her. Mothers need to be mothered.