When God whispers

Motherhood … a sweet desire in a little girl’s heart, a dream, a picture of love and a desire for perfection – to be the perfect mother and have perfect children…

Before my eldest son was born, we attended antenatal classes and also course run by our church on parenting.

The antenatal classes were well-balanced and gave us the insight and information we needed for practical parenting of a newborn and also what to expect during the pregnancy and birth.

The parenting course told us how to parent our children from newborn and through the toddler years. Sadly, this was a very unbalanced course, which was based on the personality type of the author who was almost militaristic in his approach.

Need I say, that our child was not the perfect model for these parenting skills and neither were we the model parents for it. We tried our best to get our 6 week old to sleep without being held and to fall asleep on his own, but to no avail. Eighteen months later, when our daughter arrived, I was still needing to put my son to sleep by being up close, talking and singing to him, while our daughter, who was the perfect model for the course, slept easily, happy to be put in her cot to sleep.

I also attempted to breast feed according to a schedule; 3 ½ – 4 hourly, but my son would have none of that, he wanted to be fed 2 ½ hourly. “Sleep when the baby sleeps,” were the words of advice we received, nice advice for those who have help in the house and don’t have to worry about other household duties, but not practical.
By the time my son was two weeks old, the honey moon phase was over. He struggled with winds, because I was so tense, he would cry if I put him down and I was exhausted.

One day I sat in our small sitting room, looking out the window, crying, partly from exhaustion and mostly from intense guilt that I was not spending enough time with God.   As I cried, with my son in my arms, the Lord whispered quietly to my heart:
“I know where you are at in your life. You are not the first and you are definitely not the last mother to feel this way. It is okay that you don’t spend time with me as you used to, I am with you and I will speak the words you need to hear.”

What a freeing moment that was in my life!
God whispered to my soul and gave me peace.

My eldest son is almost a teenager now. We have four beautiful children each of them unique in their own special ways. I still have days when I cannot sit and finish what I consider my time with God, but He understands, after all He is a Father.

There are sometimes weeks where all He does is whisper the same message to my heart over and over again. Why? Because that is His word personally to me and He wants that word to become a part of the tapestry of my life. His whisper to my heart is gentle, encouraging and spot on for me. Not a single preacher nor motivational speaker can speak to my heart as my Father speaks to me.

As a young woman, I used to spend my life going from one church meeting to another, hoping to hear a word from God that would change my life, point me in a specific direction or put me on a new level with God.

Parenting has taught me, that there are no levels with God. It is about doing what He has given me to do, listening for His whispered directions and raising my children to be certain of who He is, and certain of who they are, in order that they may go out and be world changers in their own unique and special way.
This is the highest calling for me and it is called MOTHERHOOD.