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our mothers, ourselves: part 1

Mark volunteered at an after-school program, tutoring high school students in English. Sister Janet was the driving force behind all aspects of the program. Sister Janet found out that Mark played the cello well, so she asked him to play for a school assembly.

Mark was not gung ho on the idea. He told Sister Janet that assemblies featuring classical music do not go well; they can get ugly. Sister Janet replied that their boys would never behave in an ugly way. Their “boys,” by the way, were young men ages fifteen to seventeen, incarcerated in the Los Angeles Juvenile Detention Center, awaiting trial for crimes ranging from armed robbery to murder.

And she wanted Mark to play the cello.

Sister Janet was a force to be reckoned with, so she convinced Mark. The day of the assembly came, and Mark was escorted by a guard to the side room adjacent to the stage and told to wait. While he was waiting, he could hear the blasting sound of hip-hop music and the young men going crazy with happiness. He ventured a peek out the door and saw that the star of the show was a scantily clad young woman, musically challenged, banging on a tambourine.

Mark closed the door and slumped in his chair. In walked Sister Janet. Mark exclaimed, “This was a huge mistake! Listen to them out there! They’re going crazy, and all that for a girl in a bikini!”

“There’s a girl in a bikini out there?” Sister Janet asked, intrigued.

“It might as well be a bikini!” Mark whined.

“Have a little faith,” Sister Janet urged.

The time came for the hip-hop group to leave. The guard opened the door for Mark and motioned for him to come onto the stage. As he walked across the stage, Mark tripped over his cello, earning laughter and applause.

Not anxious to play, he regaled the audience with interesting (to him) and boring (to them) facts about the cello until he just couldn’t put it off any longer. “I’d like to play ‘The Swan’ for you. It’s a song that always reminds me of my mother.”

Mark began to play. The concrete floors, the bare walls, and the high ceilings made the room as resonant as a shower stall. The music was beautiful. But then he began to hear another sound, the sound of restlessness. Movement. Shuffling. Oh great, he thought, they’re bored already. Risking a glance, he saw that the noise he heard was snuffling. The young men were wiping their runny noses on their sleeves. Tears flowed down their faces. Mark continued to play “The Swan” better than he had ever played it. When he finished, it was to rousing applause.

“Now I’d like to play a saraband by Bach.” Mark again played well. After the smattering of applause, one young man yelled out from the back, “Play the one about mothers again!”

Oh.

It was not so much the beauty of the music that had moved the inmates but rather the invocation of motherhood. Mark played the song two more times and received a standing ovation. The young men booed the guard when he came to escort Mark off the stage.1

Mother.

In The Pastor’s Wife, Sabina Wurmbrand shared that at night, in prison, when all is quiet, one word is called out in the darkness most often. It is a plea and a prayer all in one: “Mother.”

On battlefields when the fighting is done and soldiers lie wounded and dying, one word is universally called out: “Mother!”

I called it out. I was twelve years old, and my brother had finally allowed me to ride his minibike. He gave me instructions on all things save one: how to stop. Our driveway was long and steep, and the trees bordering it hid the road. I flew down the driveway, increasing in speed as I went, sped straight across the road, smashed into the curb, and flew over the minibike, breaking my fall on the neighbor’s wooden fence.

“Mom!” I cried.

She came running. She came with Mr. Next-Door Neighbor, and the two of them helped me limp to my room to my bed. A short while later, my mom came in to check on me, and her words were, “You need to lose weight. You were really hard to carry because you are so heavy. It was embarrassing.”

Mother.

It’s a powerful word for a powerful woman who has made all kinds of impact on your life. Our mothers have blessed us and have wounded us. It’s now time to pursue more of the healing Jesus has for us by turning our attention to our mother wound, which for some of us is the Mother of all Wounds. (Big breath. Keep breathing.)

the power of a mother

I was watching over my sons at the playground one afternoon when our oldest (only five at the time) began to move in a forbidden direction. In a flash this noise burst out of my mouth that sounded like a machine gun: “AH! AH! AH! AH!” I had never made that sound before. But my mother had. I looked around. Where had that come from? Aren’t you shocked when your mother suddenly emerges—through you?

We say, “I’m becoming my mother!” And this is usually not spoken with glee. There is a tension between mothers and daughters that feels almost primal. Sometimes our differences alone can become a source of division. My mother didn’t like the ocean and barely knew how to swim, and I am part fish. She got heat stroke if she was out in the sun for too long, and I love the sun. She dressed classically and conservatively, and I don’t like button-down shirts. Collars give me hair rats. She preferred tennis shoes. I prefer flip-flops. She thought I should cut my hair. I still haven’t.

Yet there are things about my mother that I so love. My mother loved to garden. I love to garden. She loved to bake. I love to bake. She decorated the house for holidays. I do that. She liked to entertain. I enjoy having people over. She sponsored a child forty-five years ago before most people knew the opportunity existed, and she brought orphans to our home to spend the day playing. I hope I’m like that. She was self-controlled and self-disciplined, and how come I didn’t get more of that? Honestly, there are many, many ways I would like to become like my mother.

Lillian Hellman said, “My mother was dead for five years before I knew that I loved her very much.”

Luckily for me—and thank you, Jesus—I figured it out before my mom passed away ten years ago.

It’s easy to blame our mothers. Children will blame their moms when they are hurt (so will teenagers). I was walking down the stairs behind my son Sam when he was about four years old, and he knocked his hip on the stair rail. It made a big thump sound and I knew it had to hurt, but what he did next surprised me: he turned to me with a glare and growled, “Mom!” What? I didn’t do it to him! Why is he blaming me?

We want to honor our mothers.

The command to honor your father and your mother is found several times in Scripture. It is the only command with a promise attached. “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you” (Exod. 20:12). Your land may be land, or it may be a calling, a business, a relationship, a ministry. Your land is your territory, your domain.

Mothers teach, counsel, and guide. “Do not forsake your mother’s teaching” (Prov. 1:8). Mothers comfort. “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you” (Isa. 66:13). Mothers are a source of wisdom. The famous Proverbs 31 was written by King Lemuel as “an inspired utterance his mother taught him” (Prov. 31:1 TNIV). There is a reason Proverbs personifies wisdom as a woman. Lady Wisdom walks in grace and wisdom purchased over decades of choices to cultivate her heart by faith. Wisdom is earned. And a mother passes her wisdom, her way, her core beliefs onto her children. “I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also” (2 Tim. 1:5).

Too often we have diminished our mothers, both who they are and what they’ve done. We want to respect the weighty role they have played in our lives.

We also need to be honest about our mothers—they have affected us far more than most of us realize. How could it be otherwise?

Women are made in the image of God. Remember, God said, “‘Let us make mankind in our image.…’ In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:26–27 NIV 2011). That means that our feminine hearts find their root in the heart of our Creator God. I am not questioning the gender of God or the fact that God is our heavenly Father. He most definitely, profoundly is. He is not our heavenly Parent. Father is masculine. But the Trinity—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—does not have a gender but is the source of gender. There is the father heart of God. There is also the mother heart of God. I put some words earlier to what a mother is meant to do: teach, guide, impart wisdom, comfort. Does that sound like any member of the Trinity to you? The Holy Spirit maybe?

You carry so much dignity simply because you are a woman. You are an image bearer of the living God. Priceless. Integral.

In order to increasingly become who we truly are, we need to increasingly pursue deeper healing with Jesus. So with that in mind and heart, I want to gently explore our mother wound, but you should know right off that I am not going to throw our mothers or ourselves under a bus. Not a one of us is a perfect mother, and none of us had one. God alone is perfect. I do not want to usher in guilt or shame or accusation or regret or resentment. No. In Jesus’s name, no.

A great deal has been written on the impact a father has on his son or daughter. My husband and I have both talked about this ourselves in previous books (Captivating, Wild at Heart, Fathered by God). Every child enters the world with a core question, and the primary person they bring their heart’s question to is their father. For men the question is, Do I have what it takes? Am I the real deal? For women it’s, Do you delight in me? Am I captivating? But for both girls and boys, the deepest question is, Do you love me?

Because of the way God has created the universe, the father-child relationship is the deepest in our souls. The father bestows identity. This is who you are. This is your true name. How your father answered those questions for you helped shape you into the woman you are today. Your earthly father played and is still playing an enormously defining role in your life.

It can easily follow in our thinking that mother must play a secondary, incidental role. But why would we believe that what the father offers his children is of the utmost importance and what the mother offers her children is … ummmm … clean underwear and Easter baskets? Got a great father? Super. You’re all set.

Oh, if only. No. The role of mother is profound, and the role your mother has played and continues to play in your life is utterly central to shaping the woman you are today.

Father bestows identity.

Mother bestows self-worth.

did your mother value you?

As a woman, your mother is your most potent role model. How she felt, what she thought, and what she believed had a direct effect on you.

What our mom felt about her body affected deeply how we feel about our bodies. What she believed also affected what we believe, including what we believe is possible in relationships: what men are like, what marriage can be like, how happy we can be. Our mom impacted what we think is possible in this life—what we can attain, achieve, and become. How high we set goals and dreams and even how we care for ourselves.

It’s important to take a look at that. Her effect on us is not a life sentence on us, because Jesus has come for us and we have been adopted into a new family; we have a new bloodline. But all that our mothers believed was passed on to us. And we need to become aware of it. What did or does your mother believe? How did or does she treat herself and her needs?

Are you worth sacrificing for? Are you worth being inconvenienced for? Taking the time for? Loving? Do you have any worth? Your mother is the one who answered these questions in your heart. And not just her daughter’s heart’s questions but her son’s, too.

Your mother’s effect on you is profound. It is foundational, emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, and cellular. She played an enormously defining role in your life that began when you were in your mother’s womb, continued on while you were an infant, and progressed through every stage of your life until this very moment.

A baby being formed in the womb knows much, feels much, even hears much. It’s documented that a baby in the womb is aware and that at some deep level we actually remember what was happening in our world while we were in there. If while in the womb, a baby has a stressed, fearful, or angry mother, it has a direct effect on the developing baby. The mother’s emotions transfer to the baby. The issues a mother struggles with transfer as well. For example, if a mom is substantially overweight while pregnant, chances increase exponentially that the child when grown will struggle with obesity as well. Actually, if the mom struggles with any kind of addiction, the potential increases dramatically that her child will as well.

I have battled with obesity for the better part of the past thirty years. My mother, however, was not overweight when pregnant with me, so I can’t lay the blame for any obesity at her feet. Darn. She was, though, deeply overwhelmed and profoundly depressed. I was a baby whose arrival was a cause not for celebration but for weeping. My mother didn’t know how in the world she could manage another child or even survive.

What happens in the womb sets the foundation for your life. When a mother is happy, secure, and hopeful, the blood flow to her uterus opens up and fully nourishes the fetus. When a mother is worried, anxious, or fearful, the blood vessels constrict, and the flow of blood to the fetus is constricted. The developing baby does not get enough. If that experience is predominant, the baby comes to believe in her core that she will not have enough; she is not secure, not safe, and not taken care of.2

Questions are being answered in her tiny heart: Am I secure? Will there be enough for me? Enough food? Enough emotional nourishment? Am I wanted? Rejoiced over? Panicked over? Am I coming into a dangerous living environment or a safe one?

A baby in the womb can hear voices. She will recognize her mother’s voice upon birth. You see, a mother is a mother as soon as she conceives. All that is going on in her life during those nine months of gestation matters. It affects the child. It affected you.

While you were being formed in your mother’s womb, think on it: Do you think you were satisfied? Did you get enough? Was your mother stressed, afraid? Worried? Did she smoke? Drink? Was she excited about being pregnant or terrified of it?

Since your mom was a human being, there were definitely times when she was stressed by the prospect of your arrival. And once their baby arrives, most mothers have moments or months of feeling pretty overwhelmed. You give birth to a baby, and they just send you home with it.

As a first-time mother, I got hit pretty hard with postpartum depression, and for the life of me I couldn’t understand how any child had ever survived. I was overwhelmed by the responsibility, the prospect of caring for and raising a child. Those same feelings accompany a mother who has adopted her child as well. And we can safely assume that adopted babies had birth mothers who were at times filled with anxiety too. If you were adopted, you had a birth mother who loved you profoundly and unselfishly enough to relinquish your precious self to a family she knew could offer you what she could not. You yourself may have made that incredibly difficult and utterly loving choice. God bless you for that. God knows what that has been like.

mother as nurturer

The first primary role of mother is nurturing, the giving of care that engenders life. It involves meeting the vast range of physical, emotional, social, and spiritual needs a child has in order to grow and develop healthily. A child needs food, shelter, clothing, medicine, care, comfort, and touch.

Once born, the gift of mothering hormones aids a new mother, helping her meet the needs of her very needy baby. To answer his or her cry for food, for comfort, to be held, to be changed, to be valued. Again. And again. And again. And the infant is taking note. This is where we learn: Do my needs matter? Am I valuable? Is the world safe? Will I be taken care of? Protected? Nurtured? When I need it? Or when it’s more convenient? Or never?

Infants given up for adoption in too many developing countries spend hours and days and months alone in their cribs, being held or merely touched just once or twice a day as necessary. A child who is not held enough develops into an adult with a myriad of emotional difficulties, just as an inadequate diet manifests as health problems later in life. The damage to the human soul treated with such callous disregard is cataclysmic. But we don’t have to go far away to find damage. We can go next door. Or back to our own childhood.

The first two years of a person’s life are the years where the sense of self and self-worth is formed. And who is primarily responsible for that setting? Mom. Even if she is a full-time out-of-the-home working mother who must return to her position when her infant is just two weeks old, it is not the caregiver who is forming her child’s heart. It is the mom.

We do not live in a perfect world. I am a mother myself who has failed my children in innumerable ways. So in talking about our mothers, I’m not looking to cast blame. We are searching for understanding and healing. You too may be a mother, and I am aware of the tension between looking back at our own childhoods and looking at our children’s childhoods. We can easily become afraid that we’ve ruined them forever. You haven’t, dear one. Yes, we’ve failed. Even the best of mothers fails her children. No one escapes the need for healing. No one escapes the need for God. We need him. So do our children.

For now, we want to stay present to our stories and the effect our mothers had on our lives. Let us venture back with God into our days—even those beyond our reckoning—so that we might receive God’s healing. We need to do that before we focus on how we are mothering our children, and where God is calling us to change.

Were you satisfied? Once you were born, did you get enough? Food. Comfort. Safety. Love. Touch. Eye contact. Babies need their mother. They know her voice, her scent, her face. Infants respond exponentially more to a woman’s face and voice than to a man’s.

Were you satisfied as a child? Were your basic needs for food, safety, and good touch met? Did you receive the attention you needed? Was the delight bestowed on you that you were meant to have? Were you celebrated simply because you existed as yourself? Not getting enough feels the same as rejection. Not having your basic needs satisfied creates a deep sense of being unworthy and not enough, that something is wrong with you.

My mother smoked and drank while carrying me, back in the day when they all thought that was fine. (I know—can you believe it?) She was overwhelmed by her pregnancy with me. She was angry, scared, and, in her own words, “devastated” by my existence. I did not get enough while in the womb. There was added fear because I was a high-risk pregnancy. My mother had almost bled to death giving birth to my two previous siblings and having a baby was dangerous for her. They scheduled a C-section to deliver me, and there were risks involved.

When I was born, it was into a family with an absent father and a mother who told my sisters that when they woke up, she would be gone. They would wake up and run into her bedroom to see if she was still there. My mother could not satisfy me. She did not have enough for me. Food. Time. Touch. Love. Attention. Care. Delight. Play.

Phillip Moffit of the Life Balance Institute wrote,

If you did not receive sufficient nurturing in childhood, as an adult you may feel an insatiable need, an inability to take joy in others, or a lack of self-worth despite your competency and confidence.3

Does that sound familiar to anyone besides me?

By contrast, the psalmist says,

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,

like a weaned child with its mother;

like a weaned child is my soul within me. (Ps. 131:2 ESV)

There is hope for us. There is healing. Nothing is out of reach for Jesus. “Weaned” means satisfied. I am satisfied. I have had enough. All is well. A weaned child is a satisfied child. Full. Content. Has enough. We can know that. We can.

God has used the healing of my mother wound to unlock the unsatisfied and starving places deep within me. It has been one of the final keys to free me from an ungodly attachment to food. I began to pray for Jesus to come into the unsatisfied places of my heart and to proclaim the truth that in Christ I have all I need. I began to agree with God that my soul is satisfied in him. I don’t have to fear never getting enough anymore. I don’t have to arrange for my own provision, protection, or comfort. I already have more than enough, and I always will. When I began praying that, something mysterious happened. (We’ll get more into that in a moment.)

We all have a deep soul hunger, and the only satisfaction we will find for that is in the presence of God. The unseen. The eternal. The uncreated one. Who says he will satisfy your desires with every good thing. Ultimately, with himself.

mother as protector

Another crucial role that a mother is meant to play is that of protector. This is instinctive. A child needs to be protected from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and from the threat of all three.

This is where the Mother Bear comes in. The “you don’t mess with my child” thing. I was at the playground once with friends, all of whom were mothers of young children. We were watching our children play from a distance while we talked. The younger ones were toddling around in the sand, while the older ones were swinging. Suddenly one of the little ones walked directly in front of the swing as his brother was heading back and up, up, up. The toddler had set himself up like a bowling pin in the direct line of the swing. He was going to be kicked hard and hurt badly.

His mother flashed like a gazelle. She ran through the sand, grabbed her child, leaped out of the way, and swoosh, down came the swing. It was amazing. Really! We all cheered.

A mother protects. Or she is meant to. She is supposed to know what is going on in her child’s life. To notice. To be aware. And to intervene.

Did your mother notice? Did she intervene?

My mother may have noticed, but she did not intervene. She saw, but she turned her face away. Whether it was too difficult for her in the moment because of the enormity of the sorrow in her own life, or because she simply did not have the tools or the capacity to intervene, she did not. How I wish she had.

It was prom night. Rain thwarted our plans to go to the beach after the dance, so we went back to my house. My mother would have been asleep for a long while. My brother’s bedroom was at the far end of the house, attached to the kitchen. Private. Separate. We quietly snuck into his bedroom and closed the door. In an effort to win this boy’s heart, I offered my body. Before we were intimate, but lying on the bed in heated desire, there was a noise at the door. My mother was on the other side. We froze. We didn’t move again until we heard her walk away. And then we went back at it.

The course of my life might have been dramatically different had my mother possessed the courage to knock on the door and walk in. Might have been. But she didn’t. Following countless other times of her inability to speak into or intervene in my life, this one event, all the events really, had a profound and damaging effect.

Did your mother honor you with the self-worth you deserved by intervening on your behalf, regardless of how difficult or uncomfortable it may have been for her?

Mothers bestow our self-worth, and they have the ability to withhold it. Intentionally, but more often unintentionally. A mother cannot pass on what she does not possess. And neither can we. Mothers have the ability to withhold acceptance, value, love. Our mothers failed us when, without meaning to, they passed on to us low self-esteem. Or based our self-worth on anything other than the fact that we exist.

God does not do that.

Our worth is not based on what we do, which life path we choose, or what we believe. Our worth is inherent in the fact that we are image bearers of the living God. Our worth is based on the fact that we are alive. We are human beings. Our worth is immeasurable.

Our worth as a woman does not come to us when we believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior. It comes in our creation.

If we were not of great worth, then the blood of goats and lambs, oxen and bulls, would have been enough to purchase humanity out of captivity. Back in the garden of Eden, you remember, the human race went into captivity, and the price to buy us back was so high that no ransom note was even sent. But God knew and pursued us. He intervened.

God paid the ultimate necessary ransom to buy us out of the captivity of sin and the Devil. We are all hostages of such value that it took the blood of God himself to pay our price. You have a worth beyond counting. Right now.

mother as preparer

The third critical role a mother is meant to play is to prepare her child, encouraging independence and teaching self-confidence. Mom is meant to prepare her child to become her equal and even to surpass her. The ability to do this well flows from the mother’s own self-confidence. Her self-perception cannot be tied to how her child is doing. (No one said this was going to be easy.) Encouraging self-reliance and providing education, discipline, and creative opportunities help to prepare her child to live her own life.

A mother is supposed to be a student of her child’s heart. What do you love? What do you like? It matters! You matter! Her interests are met with enthusiasm. The child is encouraged to try. She can fail and still be fully accepted. In fact, failing is simply seen as evidence that she is trying! A mother empowers her child by speaking the truth—speaking acceptance and love into her child’s life.

Okay. Pause. You may be getting overwhelmed now. Breathe. Come for us, Jesus.

As a child, were you accepted? Seen? Celebrated? Were you encouraged to pursue your interests? To try?

And what about as a teenager and a young woman? You see, you still need all of it—food, safety, comfort, love, touch, eye contact. We function best when we receive at least two extended hugs a day, and I mean long hugs. Not this A-frame business. Did you receive attention and delight? Do you remember receiving the encouragement to be you? To become your unique self? Were you welcomed into the realm of womanhood? Were you initiated into the feminine world with approval and a sense of belonging?

Do you even have any idea what I’m talking about?

Okay, how do you feel about your period? Is it “the curse,” a hassle, and a major drag? What are some words you would use to describe it? Wonder? Amazement? The gift of being a woman and possessing the ability to carry and nourish life? What was your first period like? Who taught you how to use feminine products or how to shave your legs? How did you learn how to wash your face or care for your body, your skin, your hair? Were you blessed for being feminine or shamed for it?

How did your mother feel about her body? How did she feel about her period? More importantly, how did she feel about being a woman?

Do you begin to see now what I meant when I said that your mother has played a critical role in shaping you into the woman you are today? Without even thinking about it, your mother passed all that down to you and into you before you took your first breath.

pause

Our mother wounds are so important to our lives now and our futures before us that it is going to take two chapters to get where we need to be. But I have to pause for a moment and say, sister, hear me now: there is healing; there is hope. Whatever your mother’s impact upon you, it is not a sentence on your life. What you believe, what you choose now is your path and your future. You are a woman! You are an amazing powerful image bearer of the living God. You are the beloved of Jesus Christ. To be able to embrace our womanhood and become who we are meant to be and offer what we were born to offer will require all of us to receive some healing here. We will pray through these issues together at the end of the next chapter.

notes

1. Mark Salzman, “Jailhouse Bach,” Reader’s Digest, May 2004.

2. Christiane Northrup, Mother-Daughter Wisdom, DVD (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2005).

3. Phillip Moffit, “Healing Your Mother (or Father) Wound,” DharmaWisdom, 2012, http://dharmawisdom.org/teachings/articles/healing-your-mother-or-father-wound.