God’s glorious image on display in motherhood

As my son was approaching his first birthday, I designed an independent study in which I reflected on my experience of motherhood from a theological perspective. One of my final projects was a sermon that considered some implications of mothers being created in God’s image for God’s glory. I have grown as a mom since delivering that sermon three years ago and there are some things that I would articulate differently if I were writing this today (though I have tweaked a few things). The biggest difference is that I would do more to emphasize my opening claim that many, many different parenting styles reflect aspects of God. Nevertheless, I stand behind my conviction that mothers and motherhood were designed by God to put particular aspects of God’s glory on display. As such, I’m sharing with you both the written and audio versions as my gift on this Mother’s Day. The sermon begins 3:35 into the audio file.

Answer me when I call to you, my righteous God.

Give me relief from my distress;

have mercy on me and hear my prayer…

Fill my heart with joy…

In peace I will lie down and sleep,

for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.

How do we read this text when we live in a culture that judges our babies’ “goodness” and their mothers’ competence based on whether or not the babies can fall asleep- and stay asleep- without their mothers’ comfort? I’ll read it, again.

Joan Chittister wrote in Wisdom Distilled from the Daily that “truth is a mosaic of the face of God.” I suspect that most parenting styles reveal some part of God. This has been my experience, my story.

I’ve been a little anxious about parenthood. I’ve desperately tried to “get it right.” As such, I’ve read a lot of books and browsed many an internet site. Before he was born, I knew how to seamlessly integrate Adam into our lives, provide him with just the right amount of stimulation for optimal brain development, and protect his precious little bum with undied, organic cotton diapers.

And then my labor was over 50 hrs and included Pitocin, nubaine, and an epidural. So right after he was born Adam didn’t eat well. And then Adam was a newborn so he didn’t sleep well. So I started reading, again. And asking for advice from seasoned mothers. I found and heard strong warnings urging me NOT to be fooled by my instincts which might lead me to nurse when my baby cried, allow him to fall asleep at the breast, or pick him up when he wanted to be held. They said that such behavior would cause my baby to become dependent on me and overly attached.

One of the baby whispers describes routinely helping a baby fall asleep by rocking, bouncing, cuddling, or nursing as “accidental parenting.” The general consensus is that babies must learn to self-sooth in order to sleep through the night. Of course, self-sooth means not soothed by loving caregivers. A quick search reveals that the vast majority of sleep training advice is some variation on the demand that a child learn to self-sooth by crying himself to sleep, alone in his crib.

Right after the warning not to allow my baby to become dependent on me, I read that it wouldn’t take long for him to master the art of manipulation… through tears. The antidote, naturally, is to become less responsive to his cries, not hold him as often as he’d like, and by no means feed him when he indicates that he’d like to nurse!

I have often encountered these same claims being made on theological grounds. One popular Christian parenting series taught that babies are born with the seeds of selfishness, and that one of the primary goals of parenting an infant is keep these seeds from developing into full-blown self-centeredness by teaching the baby self-control, early on. One of the primary tools used toward this end is having the baby learn patience by submitting to Parent Directed Feedings, instead of the parents taking their cues from the child.

Something didn’t feel quite right about all of this. I understood that teaching Adam self control and patience were important.  But I worried about emphasizing this too early. My faith formation classes had convinced me that the primary job of parents during infancy isn’t necessarily to teach self-control but to provide the child with a foundational experience of God.

Similarly, I could see the benefit in breaking a baby’s suck-to-sleep association. There is certainly something healthy and glorious about a child learning to fall asleep on her own. [Update 5/30/18: Since delivering this sermon I have sleep trained two children, mostly with “gentle” methods, but I’ve also let my toddlers cry in their cribs. I feel very differently about an older infant or toddler who is mad about having to go to bed and a baby who is afraid to feel alone.] But I was beginning to reject the claim that it should be our go-to parenting style or that it is it the way of Growing Kids God’s Way because it requires that parents bypass both their and their babies’ instincts, which were hard-wired into them by a brilliant Creator who designed mothers in God’s image to reflect God’s care for God’s children. Any time we intentionally bypass something that God has designed into us, we would be wise to be honest about the potential costs, and be sure we have good reasons for our decisions. The need to care for older children is a very legitimate reason to pick up the pace in sleep training, as is maternal health and obligations that take us away from home. Let’s just be honest in naming these competing realities and considering the potential costs.

I think the reason I was so aware of the value of our instincts is because in the past few years I’ve become a gardener and chicken momma. In those roles, I observed that most all living organisms from legumes that fix nitrogen to my baby chicks- they all naturally craved that which helped them thrive. Babies are born wanting to suck and be held. It didn’t seem wise to me to limit these activities very much. Now, even in God’s creation things doesn’t always work the way they were intended. Seeds don’t always germinate. Eggs don’t always hatch. Babies aren’t always born. Moms can’t always breastfeed. We grieve these losses because we sense that this was not how it was supposed to be. Nevertheless, I question the wisdom of intentionally disregarding our instincts without good reasons for doing so.

And then there was the background of my seminary classes. In several of my faith formation classes we have given special thought to transitions and liminal space. Human beings have always considered darkness and nighttime to be somewhat scary. Just this week I was reading in Luke 1:78-79, “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness…” It made me think of Psalm 130:5, “I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” Considering the way humans naturally feel intimidated by nighttime, I suspect that the way babies fall asleep and then experience night wakings may be deeply significant.

In The Developing Christian, Peter Feldmeir summarizes Eric Erikson’s belief that “Infancy is the time when consistency and quality care are registered unconsciously in the infant, producing a sense of security, a sense that the world is good and can be trusted. Simply put: the psychological goal of infancy is to develop trust” (90) Given the intimidation that humans always feel when confronted by night, it seems that the way parents approach sleep may affect the nuances of the way this trust develops.

In Stages of Faith, James Fowler describes this period of faith formation as pre-faith, in which the only spiritual task is simply being reliably cared for. So from the perspective of faith formation, I wonder if our adult faith may actually by impacted by early messages we receive from our parents. Perhaps it matters if the primary messages we receive when feeling needy or vulnerable are, “Night-night, I’ll see you in the morning!” or “Oh Love, I know you aren’t that hungry. It’s not quite time to eat.” Contrast this with hearing “It’s time to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up” and “Oh, how I love feeding you!” Furthermore, my experience, this last year, is that my own continuing spiritual formation is affected by whether my lips most regularly articulate “Please wait until I finish this” or “Of course I can come back to this later.”

So I knew I wasn’t comfortable with much of the advice I was hearing, but I certainly didn’t have a better model. And then I read the book that changed the course of my parenting: The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. Its main message was that women could trust themselves and their babies. How often should a baby nurse? However often Mom and Baby want. Where should Baby sleep? In whatever arrangement enables everyone in the family to get the most sleep. When and how should Baby be weaned? Whenever and however Mom and Baby want. So this is the path I chose.

On the way, I’ve been so tempted- probably multiple times a day- to compare myself with other moms who have gained independence and better sleep a few months earlier. Women who our culture sees as being far better mothers than myself. But when I think about the times when I’ve experienced God, this last year, over and over again I end up picturing myself sitting in the corner of Adam’s room, nursing and rocking, nursing and rocking, often in the middle of the night. It has been in those moments, while freely giving my body for the life of another, that I have begun to see some of the distortions I’ve attributed to God all these years. Through an attachment parenting style, I have experienced a different face of God.

While nursing and rocking in that chair, I have finally recognized the distance that I often feel between me and God. It was in that chair that I read Psalm 4 with new eyes:

Answer me when I call to you, my righteous God.

Give me relief from my distress;

have mercy on me and hear my prayer…

Fill my heart with joy…

In peace I will lie down and sleep,

for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.

Can I really expect God to answer my cries if I’m ignoring those of my tiny baby? Wait. Expect God to answer my cries? No, actually, I don’t expect that. I only expect God to answer my legitimate and worthy cries. And God is all-wise, after all, so God knows what’s really best for me. And what’s usually best is that I grow up and learn to self-soothe. Right?

I read of a recent study that took regular samples of babies’ saliva during a week of sleep training. Typically, “Cry it Out” methods are very effective and take only a week or so to train a baby to fall asleep without tears. This is their appeal. Babies may cry for over two hours on the first night, but only an hour on the second, and thirty minutes on the third. This study, though, revealed that even though babies stopped crying, the continued experiencing elevated levels of cortisol in their saliva, indicating that perhaps they were not learning to self-soothe, but rather that their cries would not be answered… Returning to my own relationship with my heavenly father, at some point I stopped expecting God to respond to me. And so I stopped asking much asking of God. Finally I stopped hoping for God. Because I’m just too needy.

Wow. That’s quite a reality to name. I have been blessed beyond measure by the home in which I was raised. Nevertheless, I wonder how even I have been impacted by these cultural assumptions. But then I began wondering if I could be wrong. If maybe I’m not too much. If just as my heart and body naturally respond to Adam’s cries, maybe God’s impulse is to respond to mine, even the cries that are only motivated by my needy, weak emotional desire to be close.

While nursing and rocking in that chair- in the middle of the night- I have reflected on the similarities between Adam and me. He started his life sleeping next to my bed, but between 3 and 4 months he spent increasingly less time beside it and increasingly more time in it. So for about 7 glorious months, every time Adam would wake up in the middle of the night, he was snuggled right up next to momma. That was his favorite spot in the world. About a month ago, I didn’t feel like he was safe in my bed, anymore, so I moved him to the crib. Again- sometimes there are good reasons to bypass our instincts- his safety trumped getting to sleep next to one another forever. Now, I still go across the hall pretty much whenever he calls for me, but he doesn’t sleep nearly as well alone in that crib as he did next to me in bed.

So now when I read Psalm 4, I imagine myself awaking with a start, my whole body tensing with the realization of my vulnerability in the middle of my night. And then I smell God. And I feel God. And I know I’m not alone. And I breathe. My body relaxes. And I can enter back into sleep in peace.

Our Creator designed mothers in God’s image to reflect God’s care for God’s children.

Our culture says only feed for legitimate hunger. But God created nursing to be an analgesic- so the very thing that babies want to do when they get hurt not only comforts them but also reduces their pain! God created only 10% of nursing to be about nutrition, whereas 90% is the laying down of brain synapses… In the early stages of a baby’s life, 100 billion neurons are formed… skin to skin contact- like what baby experiences while nursing- ignites the neurons. And if they are not activated, the neurons are lost forever. If a baby is exposed to something- a virus or bacteria- even if the mother isn’t exposed to it, the baby’s saliva changes. So while nursing, the baby’s altered saliva signals mother to begin producing antinodies to that particular virus. God designed feeding a baby to be about so much more than physical hunger!

Our culture says moms must separate eating and sleeping. But God created nursing to produce hormones in both moms and babies that induce drowsiness.

Our culture says babies should sleep through the night because Mom will be too tired if she has to get up to feed Baby. But God created Moms’ and babies’ bodies so that being physically close actually synchronizes their sleep cycles. So they are both in light periods of sleep at the same time, which means that Baby can nurse without really disrupting Mom’s sleep.

Our culture says moms should nurse on a schedule. But God created a mother’s milk supply to fluctuate with her baby’s growth spurts. Furthermore, she experiences physical pain if she goes longer than normal without nursing. This makes me wonder if God ever aches to nourish me.

Our culture proclaims the dangers of scarcity. But God created both cucumber vines and a mothers’ milk supply to display God’s generosity and abundance. The more you give the more you have.

I trust that Adam’s first year will continue to bear fruit because it has created in me the drive to encourage parents- especially mothers- to reject our culture’s push toward premature independence and instead to glorify God by honoring their instincts and trusting their own understanding of their family’s needs. In so doing, we open ourselves to experiencing a different face of God that I believe motherhood was created to put on display. We will also create a secure foundation of trust upon which our children can someday experience a relationship with God. Finally, we will be a witness to an insecure and needy world. Lately I have been trying to attend La Leche League meetings. I sense that many women there have felt wounded by the god to which they have been introduced. They intuitively sense the awesomeness of how their bodies were designed to work in sync with their babies’. We can celebrate this as a reflection of God’s love, and then our very lives can bear witness to a heavenly parent who naturally responds to our deepest needs.

Trusting the way we were made can be our way of working out our faith as we believe in and incarnate a God of radical hospitality. We can welcome vulnerability. We can give of ourselves. We can trust and reflect a God who comes to us, draws us, comforts us, nourishes us, keeps us, and delights in us. What joy that our lives can bear witness to this God!