When I was in my third trimester of pregnancy with my daughter, I received an insight on motherhood from an unexpected source. A manager with whom I worked at the time interrupted a business-related chat we were having  in her office to share with me a tender memory from when her first child was born, some eighteen years earlier. Most of my previous conversations with this manager had been strictly focused on work-related matters, so her shift to a more intimate topic caught me a off guard, even though I'd seen my pregnancy have a similar effect on strangers in the line at the supermarket.  Yet something about this encounter stood out in my mind, and I have remembered and pondered something she said to me that day.

She said, "Holly, I can't really explain it, but when you see and hold your baby for the first time, your entire perspective will change. Your worldview will shift, and you'll have a deeper understanding of the things that are important and the things that aren't worth worrying about."

Let's be honest here. I can't claim to have put off needless worries and petty pursuits since Fiona was born. If anything, I've displayed some first-time mommy neuroses and had to fight them with prayer, scripture, and, I admit it, the occasional nap. Still, I believe that my colleague touched on something true and profound. My perspective has shifted dramatically since my initiation as Fiona's mom. Besides uncovering a new fascination for "A Baby Story" on TLC and the ability to do makeup and get dressed in less than ten minutes, I've become more tender-hearted, more empathetic towards others, more cognizant of what it might mean to love someone unconditionally and to put her needs above my own.

Being a mother also has given me a new way to understand God's love for us. In recent years, as I've more diligently studied the Bible, I have become interested in the ways God reveals himself through human relationships. Relationships between wives and husbands, friends, and parents and children, though flawed, have the potential to teach us something important about the One who made us in His image. The relationship between a mother and a child is only one of these, but having now experienced the love of my own mother and the incredible love I feel for my own daughter, I have a more three-dimensional picture of God the Father's deep concern for His covenant children. What love he displays in nourishing us from when we are helpless babies, raising us up, teaching us to walk in this world, disciplining us in love!

It is more common to find references and imagery in the Bible of God as Father; however, during my first months with Fiona, I was moved by some pictures of God as mother that I came across in the Old Testament.  I thought I'd share three that have remained at the front of my mind.

In the first few months with Fiona, when my life seemed to revolve almost entirely around breastfeeding and holding Fiona, these passages from Isaiah resonated with me:

"But Zion said, 'The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.’ Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you" (Isaiah 49:14-15, ESV).

"For thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will extend peace to her like a river and the glory of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her hip, and bounced upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem" (Isaiah 66: 13, ESV)

Just two months ago, Fiona took her first confident steps. I believe some instruction and coaxing on the part of her parents helped her arrive at that milestone. This description in Hosea of God's parental love depicts a mother teaching and feeding her little ones:

"Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them.  I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them." (Hosea 11:3-4, ESV).

Whenever I come upon other beautiful evocations of God's mother-like love for His children, I am all the more aware of how the Lord reveals Himself to us when we bring our life experiences and our relationships into contact with His Word. And I think of the ultimate way in which God revealed himself, by going beyond metaphors and examples of human relationships, and taking on real human flesh and blood in Jesus Christ. How amazing it is to be a daughter of that kind of God!