Trinity and Humanity

Our newest baby girl was born just over two weeks ago. This is my third baby, and once again, I am hopelessly in love with my latest — my last — tiny bundle. I’ve found myself looking at her in amazement, thinking to myself that all these months, it’s been she I carried. She who was invisible to me for so long is here — already with a face I will never forget, hints of the remarkable person she will be, and a place in my heart forever hers alone. When I tell my two older children that my heart has grown to make room for their baby sister, which means no less love for them, I mean it. It has.

I’ve wondered many, many times how it was that I lived my life before they were born never thinking of them — never knowing that they lay ahead — and that once they were born, there would never be a moment that passed that I wasn’t, on some level, thinking about them, worrying about them, hoping and praying for only the best for them. Never a moment that I wasn’t their mother. The kind of love I feel in those transcendent, focused moments when I look at any of my three children is enough to make me explode.

In The Secret, C. Baxter Kruger writes about his interaction with a mother who feels that she isn’t doing enough for God when she compares herself to missionaries. He points out that she works very hard to care for her daughter. Where did your concern for your daughter come from? I mean, did you just decide that you were going to be a good mother and flip a switch that created this burden for your daughter’s welfare? What is the origin of your love for her or for your family…?

Kruger goes on to tell the mother: It is not your burden and delight, but his. 

My burden and my delight in my children is not mine, but his! He put his passion for my children in me — I get to participate! — but it all originates with and is sustained by him. If there is no distance I wouldn’t go for my children, whatever the cost, it’s because there is no distance he wouldn’t go, and hasn’t gone, whatever the cost. If I see the incredible beauty, value and potential in my children and desperately want them to see it in themselves too, it’s because he does. If I am proud to the point of bursting at every teeny, tiny step they take as they grow, it’s because he is. If I feel their pain as if it was happening to me and cry when they cry, it’s because he does.

As a mother, just acknowledging this is the beginning of the end of fear for me — I am not in this alone!! My inadequacies are not his. I may have lived my life previously not aware of and not yet loving the little ones who lay ahead of me — but he didn’t. They have always been on his mind and loved beyond description. They are safe with him.

And so it is with all of us — all people. We have never been invisible to him. We have never been out of his mind. He has always loved us beyond description. We are safe with him.

So be assured that as I gaze at my delicious newborn and know in my bones that nothing she ever does will make me love her less, he looks at you and loves you that way (and oh, so exponentially more).

~ Jeannine Buntrock

Note: To any of you mothers or fathers who have ever been told that your work nurturing your children isn’t “enough,” or doesn’t really count as being “for God,” don’t buy it. Your work is holy!