Yesterday I told my husband God couldn’t be a woman because She’d never let Donald Trump become President. As real as that feels right now, I do believe that God is both genderless and encompassing all genders. Confusing and paradoxical, I know. Welcome to religion. Recently, I read Wearing God by Lauren Winner, in which she writes about God as laboring woman. It is a metaphor used particularly in Isaiah to speak about God birthing newness in the same way that a woman births a child. It’s not pretty. It’s not neat. It’s bloody and sweaty and grunt-worthy. But, that’s how the writers of Scripture choose to depict God at times, particularly in Isaiah. She bears the weight of the world through the birthing of creation, of new and good things. She is our mother who carried us, the whole of creation, in her womb for nine months and squated and grunted and moaned for 6 whole days to birth all we know to be true. On the seventh day, She rested.
Winner has inspired me to find God where I have always seen Her, but where I haven’t named. Mostly, my mother. God is almost exclusively referred to in churches as Father. Jesus prayed “Our Father,” and patriarchal traditions down through the centuries have referred to God as Father. I was told growing up that we either understood God as Father because our fathers were good examples or they weren’t and so we could find a Heavenly Father who was a ‘replacement’ for our negligent or non-existing father on earth. On occasion, I would think, “But what about our mothers?” This is mostly because I have a mother who, in the words of Amy Poehler, is “killing it.” But, I never gave it much thought. I never pondered the ways in which God is like a mother, specifically like my mother. But now, with Winner’s help, I’m beginning to put words to the way my mother has influenced the way I think about God, the way she showed me who God is and the way God loves.
To begin with, my mother is an encourager. She has been encouraging me since I was five and she was giving me math problems to keep me quiet in church. She cheered me through grade school and middle school, although I know it pained her greatly to see me fail so miserably at track in middle school. I was only in it for the social gratification. And she didn’t do too well a job masking it, if you’d ask my melodramatic twelve-year old self. I think I eased her pain in high school when puberty finally hit and I became half decent at track. She cheered me through my tennis tournaments, through my baseball games, through all my extra curricular endeavors, and my academics. She has always been for me, for my education, for my growing in my faith, for me trying to be a better person.
If my mother’s encouraging spirit tells me anything about God, it tells me that God never gives up on us. I’ve learned that God will keep nudging us, pushing us to do what makes us and the world better, but God also never makes us do things we don’t want to do. My mother never made me play sports until I wanted to. She never made me join band or apply to certain colleges. She allowed me to make those choices pretty freely. She did make me eat my veggies and read before I went to bed (although the latter was actually me making her read with me before I went to bed). My mother is a lens through which I can see God’s desire to see Her children, Her creation succeed, to flourish, to be adventurous and bold. God is our biggest fan, the cheerleader who won’t stop shouting our name as we’re running around the track of life. God wants to see us be the best we can be. But, I also learned that God won’t hide God’s emotions from us. If God is disappointed or dismayed by our behavior, by our lack of love and grace and kindness, God will let us know. And for some of us, God’s disappointment will sting worse than any spanking ever could.
My mother’s encouragement, I think, really springs from her ability to ‘do.’ She is a doer. She is a get-it-done type of person, and while it grates on me half the time, I admire it all of the time. It mostly grates on me because I am convinced she is a superhuman because nobody has enough energy to do all the things she does, and I simply cannot live up to my mother’s ‘do-ness.’ With that being said, though, she bakes, she cooks, she walks and runs each morning, she plays pickleball multiple days a week, she encourages, she sews, she gardens, she spends time with family and friends. Retirement has made her younger because she now has too much free-time on her hands. Except she doesn’t have much free time because she’s out and about going on trips with friends, making photo albums for her grandchildren, plucking the weeds from her landscaping. I’m telling you, the woman is a superhero. And when you mix her encouragement with her ability to get things done, she is a force to be reckoned with. Ask my father, she’s always got a project on the docket for him to do. She combines these super powers and she uses them on anyone in her immediate family or in her friend sphere. If I say that I want to get a different job, she encourages me to do so, then checks in on my progress weekly. She asks how the job search is going, if I’ve contacted the places I’ve applied, and if I haven’t done anything, she asks what’s stopping me. Why haven’t I contacted anyone? Should she get off the phone with me right now so I can do it? This is the kind of superhero woman I am talking about people.
This is how I imagine God, flying around the world asking people what their dreams are, what their ambitions for the world are, and then checking back in on the daily. And, God is doing things all the while, helping people here, helping animals there, checking in on creation to make sure we humans haven’t destroyed it all yet. If my mother is giving me a glimpse into God’s character, it is that God sees something that needs done, and God does it. There isn’t a hesitation. God sets about fixing it or making it or cooking it up. And all the while, God is asking us questions to make sure we’ve set about doing that which we claimed we would do. God is following up, asking us if we’ve volunteered at the local soup kitchen yet. God is asking if we’ve gotten involved in helping LGBTQ youth yet. And then when we say we haven’t, God says “Stop talking to me and get to it!” God is like a mother in that She wants to spend time with Her children, but She also wants to see Her children succeed and to make the world a better place. She didn’t raise us to be selfish bumps on a log.
Not only does this superhuman mother of mine encourage and do, but she enjoys it. She loves doing what she does. When she tries a new recipe that tastes delicious, she shares it. She sends it to me or gives it to her friends. She makes it over and over so that everyone can experience its deliciousness. When my mother goes on a trip, she tells me all about it. She tells me her favorite parts and I can hear the wonder and awe and excitement coming off her in droves. My mother oozes good vibes. In the same way that she struggles to mask her disappointment, she cannot hide all the good things she does and experiences. She is the harbinger of goodness and wonder. She marvels at the goodness of life. It’s always amazing to me watching her grow older and continue to marvel at what life has in store for her and for me and for her family. She shares this marvel with us, this delight, this sheer excitement over good things.
And if there’s anything I’ve come to know about God over the years, it’s that God wants us to live life to the fullest, to marvel at God’s creation, to take joy in the good things of this world. My mother taught me that God takes delight when we take delight. Our creation myth tells us that when God created (or birthed) the world, She said, “It is good.” This good is like capital G Good, like feel it in the pit of your stomach Good, like all the most beautiful and precious and creative and deeply rich things combined kind of Good. And I have come to believe that God wants us to discover it, to experience it, to know that kind of Goodness. Because to enjoy and marvel at that kind of Goodness, is to enjoy God, to feel Love, to know the universe as we are meant to know it. And my mother, oh she has taught and is continuing to teach me how to enjoy that Goodness and how to pass it along so that others may enjoy it.
My mother, the superhero encourager and do-er and harbinger of Goodness. She has taught me so much about God. She has shown me how God loves us, how God chooses to interact with us. This is not prescriptive of all mothers, or maybe even most mothers. I know that all mothers are different, show love differently, and that too many people haven’t had a good relationship with their mother or haven’t even had a great mom. Maybe some of us have had an aunt or sister or cousin or grandmother who has shown us how God loves us. Maybe we’ve had some other woman in our lives show us a thing or two about God. It’s time we stopped pretended that only fathers and only men can lead us to God. It’s time we name the women too. How has your mother modeled God’s love for you? How about an aunt, a sister, a grandmother, a cousin, a friend? Tell me of a woman who is like a conduit for you to understanding who God is. I want to know! We need these stories.
Timothy Burge-Lape 