Do Not Hold Back

There are a number of women I know who really want to have a baby.

I was just thinking about how if someone I know had approached me with this concern at any age up until about twenty seven I would have been so distantly compassionate. At age sixteen I would have looked through them blankly, insecure about what to say in return. At twenty I would have believed we could “claim” a child for them if we had a prayer intercession for an hour or more. At twenty four I would have listened with shame in my own heart, not knowing why I didn’t have the seemingly normal desire to be a mom yet. And at twenty six I would have wistfully, naively chimed in about how we were thinking of trying too and how great it would be to try to get pregnant at the same time during a certain time of the year.

But by twenty seven, by the time I had both lost a baby and endured a season of waiting with no results, I would have finally understood to a degree what a real conversation with these friends would feel like. How deep the grief would be. How the words really begin to not matter sometimes and yet at other times how one word can carry you for days. How it feels like a mere dangling from a line of hope. And how the pain comes so suddenly, landing on your chest like a hundred pound weight when you see a stroller. Or watch a mom despise her blessings. Or watch a child say “mama” over and over. Or when we get asked for the millionth time when we’re going to “get going” on trying to have some kids.

I hesitate sometimes to speak to you mamas. Because I know how much you’ve heard. How some words heal. How some words injure. How many words come through the air so carelessly. Lord let me not be another.

Yet, mamas I feel like the Lord had something to say about this the other day. So here’s the deal. I’m going to write it down on here. And at some point you will probably get on here and read this. And I’m going to just ask you to put my words up on a shelf and ask the Lord if he has something to say to you through this. And I’m just letting it go the moment I write it and leaving it up to you and him.

But this is for the mamas. The mamas who are still childless. The mamas who long for another child but can’t. The mamas who are single and don’t know when they will marry, if ever. The mamas who want another but whose spouses don’t. The mamas who have had and lost. The mamas who want to adopt. The mamas who hurt for hurting children in the world. All the mamas really.

I’m in a Bible study with two dear friends and we were going through some passages in Isaiah. The passage I am about to mention wasn’t in our study but my eyes floated over to it and I couldn’t escape its content. That was over three weeks ago. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it though, and the Spirit only seems to add more to my reading of that word.

Isaiah 54
“Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married,’ says the Lord. ‘Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities. Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the same of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.”

I know that this passage has content for the people it was originally intended for. It also has content for us today, because the Word of God is alive and active, making wise the simple. When I read this, some of you came to mind immediately.

What I heard him say first is that you are already mamas. You may not physically be holding a child in your arms…but you are a mama. You are a mama when God puts that calling on you. And he did this before the creation of the world. In Ephesians 2 it says that we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he prepared beforehand, that we may walk in them. I remember when I realized I was a mama. And it was about two years before the world would say I became one. The Lord had moved my spirit to start praying about motherhood, because until then my inclinations were weak and indifferent. Through a year of writing and observing he grew the heart in me that he intended to be in me and it was a mama’s heart – years before the existence of Kanah and Grace.

Also I felt that the Spirit in me specifically noted that there is some work he intends to be done for mamas (“to be”). Rejoicing and preparation. I don’t have much to say about the rejoicing and breaking into song and all that – but lo and behold, that is what it says. Even though this passage is obviously comforting a woman in pain.

When I read the verse about enlarging your tent, stretching out your curtains, and strengthening your stakes, first it reminded me of deepening your marriage. Having children has been the toughest thing hands down on me and Jason. Because I am literally wiped. We are giving our lives away daily to these little babies. It’s our joy…but it’s our all. And because I am human, I am weak and depleted without Jesus’ continual renewal.

But mainly when I read these particular verses the Lord was talking to my heart about mamas looking around with the mama eyes and mama hearts that they have now to see the world as a mother. How would the Lord use you as a mama now? Who do you see? Who is in front of you that he is saying, go and use that heart. Go and love that little one. Go and write letters on behalf of those abused. Go and disciple those teens. Go and intercede for those lost ones. What children might he put on your heart? What social issue might he have you use that heart for now? What neighbors will you embrace? What orphans, and there are many (18,000 here in WA alone) will you love on and even foster?

When Jason and I were trying for another baby after our miscarriage, I felt like it was this lone waiting room. I am convinced now that though you are waiting for something you expect and long for, you are present in heart for something else now. Because the mama heart is there. It exists. It is truely not just a waiting room. Things are happening in that room. And that heart longs to be used to love someone. I am sure that is why it was so painful sometimes. Because that mama heart was bursting to wrap around a child.

And I do not understand the mind of the Lord, yet I humbly wonder if maybe the Lord wakes up our "mama heart" seemingly prematurely sometimes because he intends to use that loving burden now for children who not in our womb.

I saw a heart-wrenching story on Dateline the other night with Jason. We never ever watch live TV. We completely just happened upon this story on the sex trade of little girls in Cambodia. Horrific. Mothers would sell their daughters into the sex trade as slaves so as to “survive.” We saw little girls as young as eight, and some perhaps younger, telling the undercover reporters “One girl 30 dollars. Two girls 60 dollars.” Out of the mouths of skinny little eight year old girls.

Jason and I were teary the entire story. We had not intended to watch this. But we had to. I tend to be rather impulsive and wild-haired and by the time it was over I was ready to both kill some people and also sell our house and send all of our money away to Cambodia. Not to mention I was ready to adopt ten daughters. I am realizing that when I get impassioned about something I need to sit on it a while to see if it passes. If it passes, it was me getting carried away with emotion but I didn’t really get burdened. If it stays, it is from the Lord for me to pursue, because his love for people and his concern for him is not like the shifting shadows (James 1). It remains.

After watching this I also began to wonder if sometimes the Lord withholds "blood" children from certain women of God so that he can enlarge our hearts for many other children who desperately need love. This makes since to me since we are the hands and feet of Christ and sometimes we cannot look outside ourselves and our own plans unless the Lord takes away our idols and our loves. Then he can give us a new heart we didn’t know we could have.

Even already having children the Lord is using this passage to speak to me too. Some children I know who have mamas and daddies, but not good ones, are under the curtain of my tent. Some children who are “grown” but are younger than me and I have a heart for are under the curtain of my tent. One child who has no mother or father and who suffers from mental disease sits under the curtain of my tent. A boy in the Philippines rests under the curtain of my tent. Some children I know who do not have believing parents are cared for under the curtain of my tent.

And Jason and I believe the Lord is asking us again to enlarge the place of our tents, to lengthen the cords and strengthen the stakes. We believe we are being called to adopt. We have decided to just begin to listen and observe the Lord’s work in our hearts as he speaks to us through his Word, his Spirit, friends, strangers, our church, and individual conversations. We are excited to meet this child one day. And we are already his/her parents in our hearts.

Seek the Lord. Ask him if this passage has a word for you. If it does:

Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.