I Will Never Forget

I Will Never Forget

I am a mother of five children. I breast-fed all my five children. They did not experience drinking bottled formula milk. I made myself available to them on demand, as they needed me. I tell you, that’s not easy. I nursed my children as long as 2 ½ years to almost 4 years, each child. That takes a lot of love and sacrifice. Nine months of pregnancy, the delivery of the baby, then the nursing. Then it goes on – teaching each child how to talk, to walk, to read, to write... With my eldest now aged 13 and my youngest aged 1 ½, I still have 20 years of mothering before my last child finally reaches adulthood. I’ll be 60 years old by then. Even with my eldest now a teenager, I still remember the days when my milk saved her life. She was born premature weighing just a little over three pounds. She was the only child whom I wasn’t able to carry to full term. I nursed her to full size that by the time she was 2 months old, she was as big as her cousin who weighed 9 pounds at birth. The miracle of a mother’s love!

How can I ever forget my little ones whose total dependence was on me, not on a yaya (or nanny), not on a playpen, not on bottled milk, but on me? No, I can never forget any of my five children! This reminds me of God’s love.

Of all the human capacities, God singled out a mother’s love to help His people understand how much He loves them.

Isaiah 49:14-16 records the moment when God responded to Israel’s lament: But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.” “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?”

Remember, when God said those words of love and assurance to His people, a baby survived only on his or her mother’s milk. The mother cradled her child close to her breasts. There was no cesarean section, so childbirth was always natural: the mother is introduced to her infant with so much labor pains. Yet as soon as the baby is born, the pain is forgotten, and mother and child begin their bonding through the experience of nursing.

In the last forty years of the previous century, this phenomenon of nursing was replaced with high technology milk, bottles, and all sorts of equipment and instant food for the child, and so it is easy to think that a mother can forget her child, since another person can prepare her baby’s food, and things can seemingly replace her warmth and embrace.

But when God first spoke those words, presenting a question Can a mother forget the baby at her breast?, if you could just imagine those days, the answer would really be, “No! A mother cannot forget the baby at her breast!” And so, that would have been a sufficient comparison of God’s love. But in God’s eternal wisdom, He still extended His assurance, saying, Even though a mother may forget, I will not forget you! This verse finds relevance, it seems, to a people yet to come, a people who would find it more standard or a norm to feed their babies with instant milk rather than breast milk, to leave their babies in the care of others as they have to strive for a living. Such are the demands of modern living that it is no longer standard for a mother to raise an infant at her breast.

No stone was left unturned by God. God covered a time such as these modern times, when it is easy for a mother to forget her baby. God said, “Though a mother may forget, I will never forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of My hands.”

posted by Ruby Ann Kagaoan - Calo @ 3:09 AM