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  1. I don’t care if you post the comments or not.

    I was saying you shut up my response to your answer which was not fair. And my comment was not an insult or attack. Sorry you feel this way.

    I am sorry, I don’t give my personal data to anyone and anything on the internet, just because they require to do so.

    Feel free to write only for your personal friends, whom you know and whose emails are known anyway.

    Or amybe, you could make your blog private, to be entered with password. This way, no one would ever “”attack” you but tell you only what you wanna hear….

    1. Teo, I didn’t shut up your response. It wasn’t posted because of the different emails. I don’t do that, WordPress does. If you care about all your comments being published, you’ve got to use email addresses that have been approved. No biggie. It’s just the way it is.

      Certainly no need to give personal data! Just make sure that if you use a fake email, you use the same one! 🙂

      The insult was in assuming that I was egotistical and unethical because your comments weren’t posted at the time you wanted them to be. I’m not online all day, so things will be approved and responded to when I am, not when they’re written. Again, just the way it is! 🙂

  2. You know, it’s not fair that you post only the comments that are convenient to you.

    And noq you don’t post my response.

    Not ethical.
    And you said it’s fine disagreeing…..Until your ego is in question.

    1. Teo, actually ALL comments from new email addresses are moderated on this site. In this comment and your first comment the email [email protected] was used. In the second comment the email [email protected] was used. The comment automatically went into pending to be moderated because it was a new address. The only reason I feel free to post these two addresses publicly is because I know they are both fake emails. If you are truly concerned about your comments being published, in the future, please use a real email address.

      I will not continue to publish any comments that attack anyone personally (me included). That’s not the purpose of this space. Like I said in the previous comment, you are welcome to write your own blog post on the subject and send me the link if you desire. And if you have a personal attack against me, my ego, or my ethics, feel free to contact me through the contact form. It’ll go straight to my email and I’d be happy to respond to you through that means.

  3. I had to learn the same thing when believing God for a husband! God wanted me to learn to trust Him and love Him FIRST. He, of course, was faithful – I have been happily married two years! God is good!

  4. Thanks for your response. I guess more communication shows more clearly what with disagree and agree upon.

    Hebrews 12 speaks both of people who did get their promises and those who didn’t.

    Then, you didn’t explain your term of success. Rather, you told your struggles, how your heart needed to be soft and in the end you got a daughter. Hardly could anyone see from here that in fact, success is having a surrendered heart or being more like Jesus. And this kind of success has nothing to do with getting the desires or not.

    As for the definition of mother, there has to be a continuous relationship with some children and exercising constant authority over them, to be one:

    I read your blog for several years now. But still I don’t think one is a mother because other children have ocassionally lived in your home and called you “mom”.If I feed a child for 3 months and take care of him the best I can, no matter how he calls me, I am not a substitute for a mother for him. For the same things can be done by a man (who obviously is not a mother) or a grandparent or uncle or aunt. Or social assistant or a daycare etc.

    I have no problem you calling yourself anything you want to.

    I wanted to pointed out that we have to freely agree and recognize that we are never something we want, at some point. I will never be a mother with dozen of children, and that’s fine!
    And God is good regardless I am a mother or not, my desires are given or just denied!

    We don’t need to redefine things in orider that no one feels excluded, like every woman is a mama in some sort of form.

    noun
    1.
    a female parent.
    2.
    (often initial capital letter) one’s female parent.
    3.
    a mother-in-law, stepmother, or adoptive mother.
    4.
    a term of address for a female parent or a woman having or regarded as having the status, function, or authority of a female parent.
    5.
    a term of familiar address for an old or elderly woman.
    6.
    mother superior.
    7.
    a woman exercising control, influence, or authority like that of a mother:
    to be a mother to someone.

    If I occasionaly baysit I am not a mother. If a child lives for several months with me, he is not necessarily in a parental relationship with me.

    If someone does have a heart that nurtures and takes care of people, it could be said “she has a heart LIKE a mother”. But that is all that can be said.

    1. I think you’re probably meaning to reference Hebrews 11, the “faith hall-of-fame”. It begins with the verse, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Then goes on to tell us all about the many men and women who followed Christ through the centuries and ends with, “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.” The thing they did not receive, of course, was bodily redemption (the complete removal of pain and death) and the restoration of the Kingdom.

      “Mother” even in the dictionary, is not specific to a birth parent.

      : to give birth to (a child)

      : to be or act as mother to (someone) : to care for or protect (someone) like a mother

      And no, I wasn’t referencing the arrival of my daughter in this post. I was talking about my understanding of the calling and action of mothering the children around me. If I was referencing our daughter though, then I am even more confused by your insistence that I shouldn’t claim the title of mother. What do you think adoptive moms are?

      Also, out of curiosity, what do you think it means to be “soft and pliable” in the Lord? Because I think that may be the base of the issue here. My understanding of being soft and pliable is to NOT have certain ideas or thoughts of what God must do for me, or else. My understanding is that the very nature of being soft and pliable means to allow God to define my desires, and to transform my heart and life into what He created me for.

      If you’re understanding of the term is different, then by-George, throw out the entire post. Absolutely. Because this isn’t some trick to get God to do what we want. It’s a practice and lifestyle that requires me to do what God wants. Big difference.

      That’s awesome that you’ve read my writing for so long! 🙂 But there is no pressure to stick around if you feel like my claims and understanding are off. I’m sure it’d be annoying to read something if you didn’t agree with the base concepts. I have no problem having discussions about what I mean in this space– but it is also my space and there will be limits at a certain point. If something bothers you enough, feel free to write your own blog post on the subject! Drop off a link and I’d be glad to read it.

      1. I know what adoptive mothers are.
        But caring and feeding a child for several months does not make one adoptive mother. Or babysitting others’ children.

        The same goes for the women from daycare or school. who for some time do care for children. They are not their mothers/adoptive mothers, are they?

        Yes, referrence to Hebrew 11 – sorry.

        1. Teo, at this point I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Thank you for sharing your thoughts though! It’s always beneficial to rethink a position and this conversation has helped me do that. While I haven’t changed my opinion, I’m glad to have heard yours!

          1. Thanks. I guess.

            Very diplomatic response.

            As a public person/writer would say – “”politically correct””.

            1. Well, dear, I’m certainly not going to argue over the point. 😉 And that seems to be the only option from here. Diplomacy does have it’s place.

  5. I am sorry, I do not mean to be harsh, but mama is NOT every woman. I know the pain of not being one, but I cannot lie to myself that I am in a different form, for someone else.
    Mama is a woman who has family and children – that is the definition in the lexicon. We should stop redefining terms in order to make us feel better about ourselves.

    Natasha, I am sorry to contradict you, but you are making judgments about God\s qorking way too soon. What if – God forbids – your girl is removed from you? Would you sau then that God didn’t give you the desires of your heart?

    You are making a new “formula for success”: if you are soft and pliable, then God WILL give you the desires of your heart.

    The truth is, God sometimes does and sometimes does not – Hebrew 12.
    And HE IS GOOD in both cases, no matter what He does.

    We need to learn how to crucify our hedonistic selves and centered egos, to accept total denial from God concerning something we want. With a good heart, not rebelion or anger or other bad things.

    He is God and He is good and He does what He wants!

    1. Teo, first of all, don’t be sorry for disagreeing! I certainly do not have the end-all knowledge on any subject or thought.

      I don’t think I was suggesting that every woman is a mother. I am saying that there are women who function as mothers to children around them. (This definition is also given in the dictionary: “a female substituting in the function of a mother” as one of the definitions of “mother”) It is not something I invented to make myself feel better. In fact, when people referred to me as “a true mother” because of the way I learned to care for children, I didn’t really like it. The main reason being because I had a particular view of what a mother was (and what I wanted to be)– but God gave me something very different.

      If you read the links (I assume you didn’t) you would see that God surprised me with motherhood long before our daughter came. So, I don’t believe her arrival is what gave me the title of “mother” (nor was she the first person to call me “mom”). Just as I am still a mother, even though we had a baby who didn’t survive, I would still be who I am– even if something unforeseen happened with the child here now.

      As for the “formula for success”, actually, yes. I do think that being soft and pliable before God IS a formula for success. Again, like I shared in this post and linked to in other posts– it wasn’t success in terms of getting what I wanted. My life is anything but what I wanted! It was success in being who God created me to be, and in that, my heart (which is transformed by surrender) finding it’s true desires.

      God is good, yes. Even when I don’t get the things I want. He is God and I am not. (I’ve also written about this as well, many times.)

      Loved the reference to Hebrews 12! It’s a beautiful chapter, isn’t it? These last verses, I feel are a perfect close to this conversation:

      Hebrews 12:27-28 Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

  6. This gives me so much reassurance. Sometimes it has seemed completely impossible to “delight” (be happy) myself in the Lord. But being soft in His hands? I can see being able to do that… it’s tough, but it seems much more doable than making myself cheery.
    Thank you <3

    1. Exactly, Jess! I’ve heard the explanation that when we “delight” ourselves in the Lord, He changes the desires of our hearts– and this is true! But it’s the act of being soft and pliable in His hands that makes this possible.

  7. A mama wannabe says:

    This was exactly what I needed to read this morning. Confirmation that I’m on the right track. I’ve been trying to figure out how to mother without having my own children, or even a husband! Yesterday God provided for me in my prayer to be pliable and mother as he would have me mother. He sent me a little girl who couldn’t be with her mama on Mother’s Day and let me love her for a few hours. I can’t wait to see what else he does!

    1. I absolutely LOVE this testimony, friend! These are the beautiful things He does when we allow Him to change us from the inside out. Thank you for this. <3

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