Excerpt:
A mother knows how completely in tune and connected one person can be with another. I remember a distinct moment when I was putting my firstborn baby to bed for the night and thinking, "She will be hungry in about three hours." Such a small thing, and yet it struck me in that moment that I was no longer a separate individual; I would always be connected to this child and aware of her needs. As more children came into our home, my capacity to be constantly aware of them expanded. It was an invisible line connecting our souls. I felt it with each birth. Perhaps it stems from the need to communicate soul to soul rather than with words in the first months and years of a child's life. Fathers may be willing to lay down their lives for their children, but only "a mother, whose antennae are acutely attuned to her child, picks up signals that pass undetected by others" (James 2005, 174). A mother is privileged to have that constant awareness, if she nurtures it. The connection is both spiritual and physical. We ache when we are away from our babies. The longer they are away from us, the more we ache. They are engraved in our bodies and in our hearts, just as we are engraved in the palms of Christ's hands. God deliberately chose this mother-child relationship to demonstrate how completely connected He is to us. Even when we stray, as we often do, "His anger is not turned away, but his hand is outstretched still" (Isaiah 9:8-12). A mother knows that feeling.