Devotions for a New Mother: Insights, Meditations, and Prayers from a Mother's Heart - Hardcover

Tengbom, Mildred

9780764225987: Devotions for a New Mother: Insights, Meditations, and Prayers from a Mother's Heart

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0764225987 ISBN 13: 9780764225987

Publisher: Bethany House Pub, 2002

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Comfort and Insight For New Moms Facing the Joys and Fears of Motherhood

From the first stirrings of new life, Mildred Tengbom gives voice to this time of anticipation and excitement in preparing for the birth of your baby as well as adjusting to the care and nurturing that go into the baby’s first few months. Warmly reassuring and understanding, these short readings and prayers will help you prepare for this most important chapter in your life. Most importantly, she encourages you to focus on the One who gives peace and strength and wisdom when it is most needed both through His Word and through His presence in prayer.

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About the Author:

Mildred Tengbom is the mother of two daughters and two sons. She has written twenty books, teaches writing, and has lived all around the globe. Mildred and her husband now reside in Claremont, California.

I Walk the Beach at Twilight

Here on the beach it’s quiet and refreshing and I can think. The breakers washing in, the sea gulls dipping and flying overhead, the dark gray clouds, heavy with rain, moving up from the horizon, the wind whipping my hair, the salty mist stinging my face–all help to clear my mind.

Sometimes, Father, I feel overwhelmed. Life has become so complex. Demand after demand pushes its way into my life. I have become so many people, owing allegiance and loyalty and love to so many others that momentarily I become confused and need to turn to you for a sure word of direction again.

I am a wife, the chosen helpmeet of a wonderful man. And I am in the process of becoming a mother, a co-creator with God and my husband of an individual whose life I must mold, not only for this life but also for eternity. The awe and wonder of it fill my soul.

I also realize that as a citizen of this vast, beautiful, and rich country in which I live, I have certain responsibilities that go along with the privilege.

Absorbed as I am in the lives of others, something deep within never lets me forget that I am a unique individual, endowed by you with certain distinctive gifts and abilities given to me that I might contribute to the happiness and welfare of those around me.

Most important of all–and I never cease to wonder at it–I am your child, Father. I thank you for the sacrifice of your Son that made this relationship possible. Fellowship with you brings life into focus, keeps me from despair, puts courage in my heart, and gives me the faith to trust you for the best outcome in all of life.

Here on the beach, when I lift my eyes toward the vast heavens above me and consider interstellar space, I want to kneel and worship you. When the frothy waves wash over my bare feet, pushing the sand between my toes, reminding me that their boundaries have been set, I want to fling out my arms in joy that you, God, are in control. And when I turn my back to the sea and face the city, where the evening lights are beginning to twinkle, though my heart weeps with yours that so many thousands are estranged from you, I thank you that you are their Savior, and that you love them and you care.

I want to understand what is important to my husband and to help him realize his goals.

I want to be able to listen to our children, to understand them and to love them. Not in a selfish, grasping way, but in a way that will help them to be all you want them to be.

I care about those in the city too: the smug, self-satisfied ones who don’t think they need you; the frustrated, angry ones; the lonely and the homeless; the children of divorced homes; the students in the colleges and universities; the homesick students from overseas; the forgotten older people; and all those who have left their homelands for whatever reason to join us here.

But caring is not enough. Even as John and I prepare to welcome a little one into our home, show us also how we can reach out to others. We need to hear your voice so we can understand what you want us, as individuals, to do.

That’s why I’m walking the beach tonight, Father.

In this busy world of ours, help me to be wise. I hold in my hands your Word. Help me to keep it in my heart. Instruct me through it.

In the quietness of this twilight hour, speak to me.

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