“In the earthly realm, what kind of trust most approximates your trust in God?” That was a question put to me this week. My answer was that I have never once doubted my mother’s love.
It has astounded me that through all the hard work of raising my four sisters and me, and all the grief we gave her (she raised five opinionated girls!), my Mom’s love for us remains, at its core, unwavering and limitless. My trust in the steadfastness of her love grew over time and repeated experience. By my adolescence, I was sure that it would always be there no matter what. I believe that if a child receives nothing else from a parent, trustworthy love is a rock upon which she can build a life.
When I ask teenage girls from challenging circumstances to name the most important person in their lives, almost all of them answer, “My Mom. Because she takes care of me.”
Their calm and grateful trust in their mothers’ care and my own experience illuminate my understanding of God’s motherly love – a constant, deep, and forgiving love that can be trusted despite my disappointing Her, turning my back on Her, judging Her, telling Her what to do, or rudely asserting my independence from Her.
My Mom recently wrote me about her experience as a young mother of five girls and how the women’s movement saved her. “I finally felt I had a right to my own life, and I redoubled my efforts to raise each of you girls to understand that you were as deserving of your place on earth as anyone, to have a backbone, and to have a sense of your own innate worth and strength.”
I believe that is what Mother God wants for all of Her daughters as well – to know that each of us is deserving of our place on Earth and to trust our innate worth and strength.
Even as an adult, my mother’s hug is still enormously comforting to me. Her embrace creates a feeling that is aptly described by the words of Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth-century mystic known for her theology of God as Mother:
“But all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
To be able to trust in that kind of love, whether from God or one’s own mother, is what I wish for everyone.
