Prayer for Motherless Children

Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! — Isaiah 49:15

God, Mother God,

I hate today for every child who is without his or her mother. It is senseless and wrong when children, small or grown, do not have mothers. And when I think of you as Mother, I know you know this too.

You know as I do that in fact a mother *cannot* forget her child.

Mothers typically lactate without intention, without any direct action on their part, except of course for the frequent and demanding and beautiful work of giving their milk to their baby, over and over and over again.

They make milk while they sleep. They make milk while the baby is eating. They make milk when they are stressed. They make milk even during starvation. Even if they are comatose. 

Apart from wakefulness, apart from consciousness, apart from health — mothers do not forget their children.

They deplete their own resources to not forget their children. Like our Savior said to his disciples, mothers say to their offspring: This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you. Take, and eat.

At great personal cost, even when their own body is failing, mothers just keep remembering their children. 

It starts with giving milk in the early years, but it doesn’t stop with weaning from the breast or bottle. We give our energy, our time, our money, our patience, our comfort, our insights, and our presence as long as we mother. We continually embody abundance — we give and we give and we give, and there’s always more where that came from.

I pray it will be of some small comfort today, Mother God, for your beloveds that do not have their earthly mother with them any longer, to know that you are like a nursing mother.

I like to think that you weep every time a mother dies. And that your swollen breasts let down and divine milk joins with divine tears, even as you welcome a new saint into eternity. I like to think you embrace her, hold her close, and that you’re glad to behold her and she you. But I also like to think that you cry with her, as she points back to earth, back to her babies, the ones for whom her tears and milk flow. I like to think that you hold all that tension, Nursing Mother God. 

In your creative genius you made us to have a symbiotic relationship with our babies, our breasts an always-running tap. Milk is ready on demand, on cue. We mothers physically possess the answer to our infant’s every need: bonding, nutrition, sleep, comfort, immune protection, pain relief, visual development, and so on. 

Nursing Mother God, you must be like this too. You keeps feeding us — there’s always more. At your breast, I have no doubt, mothers who have passed over into the great mystery receive bonding, nourishment, rest, comfort, protection, balm for wounds, and keener vision. 

I imagine the heavenly teat is always available, a never-ending flow, an ongoing source of life, a fountain of abundance.

So just as you invite us, Mother God, to unite with you to create new lives in our wombs, I wonder too, if you invite us to participate in the heavenly flow of milky abundance. After all, women are so good at turning their bodies into food.

There are a few mothers up in Heaven with you today that I really wish were still here with their children. The actual tummies of their babies are hungry, and those mothers used to be encased in flesh, with an always-running tap ready to immediately satisfy. But now? Now there is no milk, there is no tap, there is no Mama who embodies abundance. There are only hungry babies, hungry children, hungry grown-up children still needing mothering…and mothers who are ethereal spirits. They continue to love from a realm away…but they cannot fill the stomachs, hearts, and souls of their children any longer. Their tap is dry. 

But I do know, Mother God, that your heavenly teat is not only for those in Heaven. It is for all of us. You create us, you carry us, you birth us, you give us our very breath. And you just keep feeding us all the way through life: here’s a hug from your best friend. Here’s a kiss from your daddy. Here’s your spouse holding vigil with you. Here’s your baby snuggling close. Here’s a sunset, a hummingbird, an apple tree, a snowfall. 

And maybe, God, maybe when a mother dies and goes to her eternal rest, maybe she’s not just resting. Maybe she continues to embody abundance. Maybe she keeps nursing her babies from a distance. Maybe blessings are the collective letdown of saints who know how to churn out ongoing nourishment for the sake of others. Maybe blessings flow because milk does.

In the transition that no one living can understand, I wonder what part of a mother’s psyche and soul is the last to leave this earthly place. Knowing what mothers do, knowing who mothers are, knowing our bellies and vaginas and schedules and staminas stretch to amazing degrees, I have to think it’s our maternity that is the last to let go. 

Even as divinity beckons, and this world can claim a mother no longer, I have to think a dying mother is holding on to her children to the very last second. I have to think her intention, her love, her prayers, her hope, her dreams are set on her babies, until her brain can no longer hold such focus. And even after that, when doctors are making death pronouncements and chaplains are holding hands, I wonder if maternal fixation continues, like lactating breasts, an always-running tap that simply reboots on the other side. 

And perhaps in joining you, Nursing Mother God, the resurrected mother whispers some eternal words to her children through tears, words that describe her life of abundance as well as her celestial plans: 

I am always with you, and everything I have is yours. 

Holy One, Nursing Mother, Thou Who Shall Not Forget Us, wrap your maternal arms around the motherless children today. Invite the mother saints, whose very hearts are toddling around on earth, to help you let-down abundant blessings on their littles ones. 

May you find rest, precious dear ones without mothers on earth. May you sense that your mama is still making milk for you. May you feel the heavenly flow of love coming down. May you sleep easier tonight knowing that while it’s operating on a different circuit now, your mother’s concentration on you never stopped and it never will. 

Can a mother forget her nursing child? It may have been a question for Isaiah. It’s not for your mom.

To She Who is Able to Do More than We Could Ever Ask or Imagine,

Amen.

Photo credits in order:

• Photo by Leandro Cesar Santana on Unsplash
• Photo by Wasun on Pexels
• Photo by Charles 🇵🇭 on Unsplash
• Photo by By igor_kell on Pexels
• Photo by By JenkoAtaman on Pexels