What the first week of holding my child revealed about the God who held me first
There is a strange stillness in the first week of motherhood.
The world narrows to the rhythm of a breath that is not yours… to the weight of a body that does not yet know language, but knows you.
I had waited for this.
Prayed for this.
Learned to loosen my grip on the very desire for this.
And now that he is here, resting in my arms, I find myself asking a quieter question — What was God really preparing me for?
Because this… this is not just a blessing.
This is a weight.
And I am not sure I could have held it,
had I not first walked through the wilderness.
The Wilderness Was Not Empty
There was a time when my prayers felt like they were disappearing into silence.
Not unanswered — just unreturned in the way I expected.
I thought I was waiting for a child.
But slowly, almost imperceptibly, God was teaching me something far less comfortable — How to recognize Him without the evidence of a blessing.
In the wilderness, He strips away substitutes.
Not to punish… but to clarify.
“You shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you… that He might humble you… testing you to know what was in your heart.”
(Deuteronomy 8:2)
The wilderness was not empty. It was intentional.
He was not withholding a child. He was reshaping the hands that would one day hold one.
Then, there is a pattern in Scripture: the number 40 appears often —
not as a milestone, but as a passage.
Forty days. Forty years.
- Rain fell for forty days before the earth was made new (Genesis 7:12)
- Moses remained on the mountain forty days, receiving what would guide a people (Exodus 24:18)
- Israelites wandering in the wilderness — forty years of wandering before entering promise (Deuteronomy 8:2)
- Jesus Christ fasted for forty days in the wilderness before stepping into ministry (Matthew 4:2)
Moments where God allows something to stretch, to press, to prepare — before something new begins.
The wilderness was never the destination.
But it was always the threshold.
And now, I find myself in another kind of forty — the quiet, hidden work of recovery.
Where the body heals slowly.
Where rhythms are not yet steady.
Where life has arrived… but everything still feels in-between.
It is not lost on me that even here, God works in the same pattern.
He does not rush formation. He honors process.
And perhaps… just as the wilderness prepared me to receive, this season is preparing me to sustain.
When the Gift Finally Came
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
(James 1:17)
And then, quietly, without announcement… the answer came.
Not as a resolution, but as a responsibility.
“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord…”
(Psalm 127:3)
A heritage. Not a possession.
That word lands differently when you are holding a life that depends on you for everything — and yet does not belong to you at all.
There is a trembling that comes with this realization.
Because stewardship carries a different kind of weight than longing ever did.
Longing says, “Give me.”
Stewardship whispers, “Will you care for what is Mine?”
And suddenly, I understand — God was never just preparing me to receive.
He was preparing me to carry.
The Language of a Child, the Language of the Soul
My child does not know words.
But he knows where to look.
In moments of discomfort, of hunger, of confusion — his eyes search for my face.
Not my explanation.
Not my logic.
My face.
And something in me breaks open when I realize — this is what the soul has been doing all along.
“Make Your face shine upon you…”
(Numbers 6:25)“Do not hide Your face from me…”
(Psalm 27:9)
These were never just poetic lines.
They are the instinct of dependence.
The cry of a being that does not need to understand — only to be seen.
Before my child can interpret the world, he is anchored by presence.
And I am reminded — God does not first offer explanation.
He offers Himself.
Worship, Re-Sung
There are songs I used to sing in the wilderness.
Songs that carried me when I had no evidence — only trust.
Back then, they sounded like survival.
Now, I sing them again — with a child in my arms.
And they sound like fulfillment.
But here is the unsettling truth — the songs did not change.
God did not change.
Only my context did.
Which means…
He was just as faithful when I sang them in emptiness as He is now, when I sing them in fullness.
And that realization humbles me.
Because it reiterates that the wilderness was not a lesser season.
It was a truer one.
God as Father, Not Metaphor
There is a kind of attentiveness that motherhood demands.
A constant awareness.
A listening beneath the noise.
A readiness that does not switch off.
You respond before logic kicks in.
You stay even when you are exhausted.
You give without measuring.
And slowly, a realization settles in — This is not new.
This is reflected.
“Can a woman forget her nursing child…?
Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”
(Isaiah 49:15)
What feels overwhelming in me is effortless in Him.
What feels costly in me is constant in Him.
God is not like a parent.
Parenthood is a faint echo of Him.
Closing: The Circle Completes
I thought I was waiting for a child.
But I was being led through a landscape where my need for God would be stripped of conditions.
So that when the gift finally came, I would not confuse it for the Giver.
Now, as I hold this small life — dependent, searching, trusting—I see it more clearly.
If you are in a wilderness, still waiting, still asking — I won’t tell you to hurry through it.
Because the wilderness is not just something you survive.
It is something that shapes how you will one day hold what you receive.
Different seasons. Different stories.
But often, the same quiet intention —
“To be conformed to the image of His Son…”
(Romans 8:29)So that when the answer comes — in whatever form it does—we do not just recognize the gift. We recognize the Giver.
Reflection
- Where have you mistaken God’s silence for His absence?
- What “wilderness” season in your life might have been preparation rather than delay?
- Do you relate to God more through outcomes… or through presence?
- What does it look like, practically, to “seek His face” in your current season?
- How might your understanding of God shift if you saw His care as constant, not conditional?
Originally published on Medium. Reposted with the author’s permission. All rights reserved.
