Motherhood, the Gospel, and Dying to Self

Republished and updated from 2021

Reading time: about three minutes

It was naive of me to think I wouldn’t write often about motherhood after my daughter, Eliza, was born.

Without understanding how deeply her birth would change me — physically, emotionally, psychologically — I presumed there would be a day I was myself again. I imagined, what I assume many of us do with having a child, that I would eventually bounce back to my old “normal” self.

There is no bouncing back in motherhood.

We need to stop believing that women are rubber bands that can be stretched thin in every way and can return back to what we once were before we held things together.

There is no bouncing back from the anxiety and then the weight of carrying your child, even if you’re able to get your body back to what it looked like before birthing.

You cannot remove the long nights of insomnia, sickness, or the widening of hips. Motherhood has no room for bouncing back; motherhood is an expansion.

Even after we grow physically, we are forever growing in other ways. These thighs are sturdier from carrying my daughter and pacing the house at night. These arms are wider in order to hold her. This stomach is softer so she can lay down on me. These breasts gave her food and now continued comfort.

We are transformed by motherhood in all of its facets, whether that looks like the woman praying for fertility treatment or the woman in labor. Women are transformed by their miscarriages, their stillbirths, and their adoptions.

We are given a terrible and beautiful insight from God to know how great pain can bring forth something new. The impact of motherhood lingers for longer than a season. It is cyclical like the seasons of nature or the body of a woman.

The year of 2021 was the first Mother’s Day where I was a mother myself. It was the first year I wasn’t crying in the car after a church service because doctors had told me pregnancy is unlikely. My desire to become a mother had always been painfully shoved aside with comments about how it wasn’t something I had time for…anything to push away people and their questions.

I find myself not reflecting so much on the answered prayer that Eliza turned out to be but on the fact that motherhood transforms us in the same way Christ transforms us: entirely.

With Eliza’s birth, I had to realize that I was someone new.

A few weeks into motherhood that realization came from the comment that my old self is dead.

In that moment it felt like God was speaking through someone else and reminding me that he makes all things new. It was oddly comforting despite its bluntness because being a follower of Christ helped me identify the hope of the gospel. Death, literal or not, doesn’t have to be something terrible. It was me grieving the old self that was holding back my ability to see new life within me.

This is the same transformation that God works within us when we come to know him. After Christ has touched our hearts, he has set us apart in him. We are forever changed in knowing him. We can choose to sin against him and turn away, yes, but we cannot truly turn back.

This Mother’s Day I want to be closer to my savior. He knows what it’s like to comfort his children and watch them struggle. He knows what sacrifice of the body looks like. He knows how our scars tell the story of God’s creation and of his redemption.

We don’t need to bounce back from motherhood’s impact. If anything, we need to embrace the story of rebirth within ourselves no matter what motherhood brings us in losses or gains. By doing so we’ll find a reflection of God’s story of redemption. Watch how it changes us.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here.”

— 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

P.S. I know mother’s day can be extremely difficult for many women. If there is anything I can do in prayer for you, please leave a comment or send me an email.