Stepping outside the walls of the hospital as a first-time mom, I was now fully responsible for this little one’s life—a baby who could not survive without me. I hadn’t cared for an infant before. I wasn’t sure how to be a mother—I had only become one 48 hours prior.
But no one stopped me. And like every new mom, I was thrust into a world of midnight feedings, baby burping, sink baths, and teaching an infant to do something I thought should have come naturally—sleep.
Caring for a newborn while also fostering my relationship with God were steep learning curves; being a new mother introduced me to a new season of connecting with God.
Leaning Into a New
Season
In my first weeks of motherhood, I was faced with my insufficiency and weakness. The physical exhaustion from delivering a baby, the fog of not sleeping more than two hours at time, and the weight of caring for a tiny human whose crying sometimes mystified me, forced me to ceaselessly pray for God’s help. I needed His strength to make it minute-by-lonely night-minute. Tears would trickle down my face as I cried out to the Lord for the night to end and sunrise to come.
When I could peer out the living room window and catch the beginnings of the sunrise, the despair of a long night would vanish and hope would rise up within my heart. The citrus-colored sunrise would remind me of God’s faithfulness to walk alongside me in the hard moments—and that night would always give way to light.
Prior to having children, I would wake up after a full night of rest to read my Bible and pray before leaving for work. I would sip a cup of black tea as I sprawled across our oversized chair in the solitude of our one-bedroom apartment. But when my newborn needed me every two hours and I was in survival mode, I was forced to adapt from what had been my pattern for over a decade.
At first anger sprouted in my heart. Why was my newborn preventing me from connecting meaningfully to God? But gradually, I began to recognize God was using my precious infant to commune with Him in new ways. While I missed how I used to spend time with God, I needed to embrace the life I currently possessed and navigate how to abide in Christ given my new circumstances.
Rather than demanding silence and solitude, Jesus met me in the chaos of motherhood. He wasn’t put off that I could hardly piece together a coherent thought about the passage I read while nursing or was unable to set aside the same block of time to read the Bible and pray as before.
Much like how seeds mysteriously grow, the Lord cultivated my faith in the midst of caring for a newborn. God met me where I was because His love was never contingent on polished moments together but on His faithfulness—and that was the gift of motherhood.
Read the rest of this piece at Momma Theologians.