Craving more: The struggle with spiritual motherhood

Let’s lay it all on the table: I’m 31, I’m not married, and I don’t have kids. But I want all of that. So. Badly. Okay, now that we’ve got that established, let’s get into the story.

When “spiritual motherhood” feels like a consolation prize

I’m part of a wonderful community of women, many of whom are wives and mothers. And as we walk our Christian lives together, we share what ‘womanhood’ means to us. And for those who have husbands and children, those things shape their perception of what it is to be a woman. And in our conversations, when it comes around to me, I often hear the phrase ‘spiritual motherhood’. Me, in my single, childless state, get to practice womanhood through my spiritual motherhood. And let me tell you, that phrase didn’t always sit well with me.

One night last summer, I finally took that pain to God. I was helping with a retreat for high schoolers, and we had a night of adoration. We told the kids what retreat leaders always tell kids: “That’s Jesus on the altar. Just talk to him like he’s your best friend sitting next to you. He wants to know everything you have to say.”

As I was sitting in a pew in the back of that dim church, I decided I might as well also talk to God like he’s my best friend. After all, what kind of hypocrite would I be if I couldn’t do what we invited the youth to do? I’ve discovered that the best way I can talk to God is through my journal, so I opened it up and started to write.

An honest conversation with god

That night I yelled (angrily wrote) at God. There were other people around me, and it would have been a little weird to start yelling. But in my heart, those words were coming out with the force of an angry tirade. I told God all about the pain the phrase ‘spiritual motherhood’ caused me. Here are a few quotes from that night’s journal entry:

“Spiritual motherhood is overcoming the longing, the despair, the jealousy, the pain of comparison, the sting of loneliness, the frustration, the impatience, the perceived rejection”

“been relegated to spiritual motherhood because I’m not an actual mother”

“a consolation prize”

As I read those angry words, I saw my true feelings. I hadn’t laid them all out like that before, much less in front of God. But then, my best friend on the altar started to speak truth to the pain. I shut the journal, and I just listened. What I heard made me cry.

What God showed me about true motherhood

Spiritual motherhood is not a consolation prize offered to those of us who fail to have natural children. It also doesn’t mean being a godmother or being a pseudo-mother. Being a spiritual mother doesn’t mean that I have to find someone to be a second mom to, like some kind of cool aunt who always has a full cookie jar and a listening ear.

God ever so gently reminded me that there are two words in that phrase I detested. And the second word is actually more important than the first. I needed to discover what motherhood really is, and then I could see that the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘physical’ just describe how we live it.

Okay, let’s not go too fast here. Step one: what is motherhood?

Redefining motherhood: It’s all about generating life

The word God put on my heart is ‘generative’. That’s true, isn’t it? Motherhood is generative. Physical motherhood is generating new humans, and spiritual motherhood is generating nearly anything else.
Any woman, regardless of her status as single or married, with or without children, is called to spiritual motherhood. I’m convinced it’s part of the feminine genius.

Spiritual motherhood is breathing life into your job, into your projects, into your volunteering, into other people, heck, even into your house (decorating, cooking, etc.). This doesn’t mean that men can’t do those things; many men do them well. But as women, we have a unique participation in God’s generative power, and when we live that out in non-childbearing ways, we call it spiritual motherhood.

This new concept of spiritual motherhood rang even truer for me as the school year began this fall. I work as the faith formation coordinator for my parish, which means I have the joy of recruiting volunteers to help with everything from vacation Bible school to teaching teenagers to decorating for All Saints Day.

And each year, I have a new woman who reaches out to me and says she is a new empty-nester and needs a project to pour into now that her babies are gone. Why? Because she senses that she was created to give life, and her children aren’t around to receive her daily offerings.

But we don’t have to only be spiritual mothers before we have kids or once they are grown. Women of all walks of life are constantly breathing life into the people and organizations around them. Moms volunteer at the parish, in the school, in their kids’ social circles.

Moms show up with the snacks to nourish the soccer team, they create presentations to teach classrooms full of parish children, they watch over a friend’s kids while she runs a quick errand. Working moms manage to breathe life into a company, clients, new projects, etc.

There’s only a slight difference between women who are physical mothers and those who aren’t. Physical mothers have a responsibility to breathe life into their children first. And while that’s not at all insignificant, God pointed out to me that it adds to their motherhood, it doesn’t diminish mine.

Trusting God while you wait

I’m not going to wrap this up by saying that all my frustration, loneliness, and impatience was taken away the night I yelled at God. I’m still praying about this regularly. But I am consoled by a new favorite Bible verse, Isaiah 29:16. In it, Isaiah is talking to Israel about all the ways they’ve turned from God. He says, “Your perversity is as though the potter were taken to be the clay: As though what is made should say of its maker, “He made me not!” Or the vessel should say of the potter, “He does not understand.” (Isaiah 29:16, NAB)

This beautiful verse reminds me not to withhold my pain from God as if he doesn’t understand. God made me. He understands how I feel. He knows about the pain, the longing, my desires. He knows, and he does not ignore it. So I pray that one day God will fulfill my desire for a family of my own. Until that happens, though, I’m trying to live fully in my spiritual motherhood and pour life into the people and things around me.