The Wrap-Around Presence of a Mother’s Love

This month’s “Can I Be Candid?” was written by Sharon Beattie, guest contributor for NancyHicksLive.

“It just hurts so much, Mom. It’s so hard.”

I hold my daughter close, stroking her hair. Having broken up with her boyfriend of two-and-a-half years a couple of weeks before, the aftermath felt excruciating. Holding her heart, I feel my own heart breaking from the depth of her loss as if it were my own. I’m certain her ex-boyfriend’s mom is comforting her boy, too, profoundly feeling his pain. 

My sister lamented recently, “I didn’t expect it to feel like this. Being a mom. Feeling everything they feel.”

Would we have undertaken this journey of motherhood had we known we would walk our children through breakups, bullying, gender dysphoria, illness…or even watch our child die? In a child’s suffering, a mother’s heart “offers itself to break and grow wide, to gather itself around another as refuge, as home,” says Jan Richardson. 

A mother bravely enters into suffering, enfolding her child in her healing embrace. “Love may be [what] keeps the stars in the firmament,” says Maya Angelou. “Love allows you to be tough and tender […] to be courageous.” 

Courageously we join with the mother heart of God — self-giving, co-suffering love — intrinsic to Jesus’s sacrifice. Mothers enter their child’s experience: God’s likeness clearly imprinted on a mother’s heart. 

We are inextricably bound together. Scientists say there is a two-way exchange of cells, mother to baby, throughout pregnancy. Could this be why a mother even experiences a physical sense of her child’s joys and brokenness, even after they’re born?

A mother’s love holds both the pain and beauty of her child’s life. This is brave work. For all mothers who have loved, lost, or yet long for a child, the promise is God’s presence with you – in heaven, death, hell. We are enveloped in God’s loving arms. 

Enveloped in my arms, my girl cries softly. My heart breaks and grows wide, gathering itself around her. 

God in us, we in God. Our children in us, we in them. Gathering. Holding. A mingling of hearts, lives, and cells bound by an indelible love that will not let us go.

Sharon Beattie is a master’s student studying writing and spiritual direction. She loves learning new things, and full of anticipation with what’s to come. She is profoundly grateful to be wife to Mark, mama of five, grammie of two, and beloved of God. Sharon can be reached at bydesign.sharon@gmail.com.