I feel like motherhood brought the curse nearer to me. I feel like it dropped me on the far side of the sea as I watched my body and my mind unravel into threads only to be wound back up with anxiety and worry. The suffering of a world so infected by Adam’s fall has entered my daily life in a way I didn’t know was possible.
And motherhood has brought out my sin nature, too. I shudder to think of the words that have been on my tongue in the trembling hours of night with a baby who will not stop crying. I wonder, from my view, lying on the floor where my toddler insists I stay while she stacks blocks, if this is what “the way everlasting” looks like for everyone, or just for tired moms. This season of life has yanked me roughly by the arm and stood me in front of the mirror by which I can see full well the ways I fall short of God’s standards of righteousness, which are unmoving—even for mothers.
I didn’t realize how hungry I was for a gospel promise that met me in this season of motherhood until I lay awake in my baby’s crib one night, running through all the Scripture I had once committed to memory while I waited for her to finally drift to sleep. The verses of Psalm 139 flooded back to me like a salve on wounded skin.
Psalm 139 Is for the Children We Worry Over
From the moment I was confronted with uncontrovertible evidence that a new life was indeed growing inside me—which is still crazy to think about—I have worried over her. Will she be healthy? Will she be safe? Will she be saved?
What a tremendous relief, then, to know that I’m not the only one watching her grow! What a humbling thought, that the Almighty is holding her with his right hand (v 10), that he has knit her together himself, “intricately woven in the depths of the earth,” (v 13, 15), and that he will lead her in the way everlasting (v 24). And because I believe in the covenant nature of God’s promises, that the hope of the gospel is for us and our children (Deut. 6:6–7), I can tell my daughter that this psalm is for her. I can tell her that this is her God, too—that her God has hemmed her in, behind and before, and laid his hands upon her (v 5). And what better hands could she be in?
Psalm 139 Is for the Mothers Who Are Weary
In ways both that I expected and that have surprised me greatly, early motherhood has been a wearying season. God made this body. He made it capable of bringing life into the world, to be pushed to its limit and then to heal. He called it all very good (Gen. 1:31). Surely, I can say with the psalmist, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (v 14).
But that does not always feel true in seasons of early motherhood. The body changes so much during the year of growing, birthing, and sustaining an infant. It’s not just weight gain and loss—your organs rearrange, your joints go wacky, your hormones rage, and there is more hair loss involved than I could have ever imagined.
When you’re standing in front of your bathroom mirror wondering what happened to your body and your face and your hair, this psalm is for you. You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
For many of us, the years with littles are also isolating. Sometimes, I go a whole day without hearing an adult voice outside of my husband’s and the audiobook I’m listening to. Naptimes and flu season make planning playdates or social events unpredictable. Even at church, I spent the first few months postpartum tucked away in the cry room, nursing a baby who didn’t seem to be happy unless she was buried in my arms and away from the world. And yet, God was there, too. There is no place I could flee from his presence.
The fog of postpartum and the endless drip of nights cut short brought me through a low valley. With the psalmist, I found myself saying, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night” (v 11). And yet, “even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you” (v 12). This God is with me in the lowest, darkest, and loneliest places of motherhood. When the weary thoughts brim up, he knows them from afar.
Psalm 139 Is for the Moms Who Are Falling Short
Actually, the hardest thing about motherhood for me has been myself.
I’m constantly disappointed at the mother I’ve turned out to be. I thought I’d be so peaceful and happy and patient. Imagine my surprise when I turned out to be just as deeply flawed and sinful as a mother as I am a friend, wife, and daughter.
The penultimate stanza of Psalm 139 used to confuse me. Nested in such beautiful verses about God-given life and the mystery of its making is a hate speech (Ps. 139:19–22).
What is this imprecatory prayer doing in the middle of a psalm about the making of new life?
If you piecemeal apart this psalm (as I have done thus far), drawing out only the lines that apply neatly to your situation, you will miss the whole. And the whole is a psalm about vindication. It begins and ends with a call for God to search and know—to see if there has been any offense. God knowing us down to the moment of our conception is not just a source of comfort, but a reminder that no one is a better judge of our sin. And we are all born with it. David knows this; he sings about God’s desire for purity in our secret hearts but admits that even he was “brought forth in iniquity” (Ps. 51:5).
There is, in fact, only one person of whom we can say this does not apply: Christ. Only he could stand before God and declare Psalm 139 on his own merits.
The imprecatory stanza in this psalm is meant to reinforce the credibility of this psalmist’s claim to righteousness: he hates those who are wicked, who are enemies of God. And the humbling truth is that such were you and I before the intervening mercy of our savior. “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life” (Rom. 5:10). We were enemies of God, and Christ, by his perfect life, reconciled us and made us children of God instead.
A psalm of new life, indeed.
So, if you feel the weight of your shortcomings in this season; if the accuser comes to you with his spindly lies and whispers in your ear, “You’re not enough, you’re a bad mom”... If you see your offenses against God and long for assurance of his pardon—this psalm is for you.
You can pray this psalm because Christ is your righteousness, because he has died that you might have life, and because he stands before the throne of God as your advocate before the Father, leading you in the way everlasting.
