where we are full-on celebrating the official release of Love like a Mother: How the Sacred Work of Motherhood Reveals the Maternal Heart of God!
This book’s gestation has been long. I first started thinking about its themes eight years ago when my long-legged 13, 12, and 9 year olds…
…looked like this:
I don’t compare much to my pregnancies and births, but this has come close. The first trimester of actually sitting down to write whole chapters once Brazos Press asked me to was, at times, nausea-inducing in its overwhelm and first-time uncertainties. Then, I ate a lot of snacks and the book grew eyelashes and fingernails during the editing process while the dog glumly wondered why we were walking less (there was even back pain at one point from sitting too long in a hard coffee shop chair). Very Tri 2 coded.
Can we compare trying to market a book to some good old-fashioned third trimester nesting? Buying tiny little clothes to choosing cover art? I think we can. And certainly, the build up and (positive!) pressure of the last couple months has felt more than a little like labor and contractions.
And here we are.
Her birth day!
I am so excited and also deeply craving a postpartum Italian sub.
When I say that writing a book is a dream come true, I mean it. Literally. Just look at that little girl and her typewriter, likely pretending to be an author, amidst all that late 1980’s wallpaper.
And specifically, the fact that this book is a reality is a prayer answered. Eight years ago, the question Does God love us like a mother? took hold of me and wouldn’t let go. As I read, researched, and wrote my way toward the answer, I found God infinitely more good than I had ever imagined. And I found myself loving God more.
In her book Motherhood and God, Margaret Hebblethwaite wrote, “In the end what I have wanted to write about is God, and I have wanted to write about motherhood as a way into writing about God. . . . I shall be satisfied if I have helped anyone to find a God who is even a fraction more real, more loving, more warm.” I wrote about my hopes and dreams for this book the other day, but this one sums it up perfectly.
The line is thin today between nervousness and excitement. “My bees are buzzing,” as one of my kids used to say when they were little and couldn’t tell the difference between the two adjacent emotions. But to extend the metaphor, more than anything, the bees are buzzing a resounding thank you. They are glutting themselves on honeyed gratitude.
I call you out in the acknowledgements of the book, you know, every one of you here. Thank you for reading the words I write. Thank you for caring about knowing God as mother. Thank you for being here with me at the back of the flock.
Love like a Mother is available anywhere books are sold in paperback, ebook, and audiobook (which I got to record myself!). If you order today from certain retailers, you’ll have it just in time for Mother’s Day (wrap it up and give it to a mom in your life along with an entire day she doesn’t have to plan, or better yet, order it for yourself as a lil’ treat).
Buy it from a bunch of other places!
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