When my mother was on her death bed, I sang to her one day when she was restless. I was comforted to see that it calmed her as she laid with her eyes closed. When I started singing the lullaby she had made up and sang to us when we were little, her eyes suddenly opened and she smiled lovingly at me. I treasure that memory!

Several days later as she became unresponsive, I started hearing a tune over and over again, almost as though it were coming over the hospital’s sound system. Throughout the long night on the uncomfortable cot in her room and into the next day, I kept hearing this tune. It was familiar, but I wasn’t recognizing it.

Then, as I was walking down the hallway hours before she died, knowing her death was imminent, my heart cried out, “Who will be my mother now?”

Immediately, I heard God say to me, “I will,” and just as immediately I recognized the tune I was hearing incessantly — it was my mother’s lullaby! God was singing it to me now.

My mother was the one who knew me almost as well as I knew myself. She understood me. She affirmed me. She believed in me. All my life, I dreaded losing her. I thought that when she was gone, the affirmation and support she had given me all my life would be gone as well.

But they’re not. God has filled that role in ways I could never have imagined. Recently someone told me I have become more confident in recent years. While at first I was surprised, upon reflection I realized God has given me that confidence as He has become my All.

The Psalmist referred to God as “a father to the fatherless” (Psalm 68:5), but I can testify that He is also a mother to the motherless. He is all things to us if we’ll let Him.

Some would protest referring to God in a feminine way, but Jesus Himself referred to His motherly instincts when He said to the Jews in Matthew 23, “how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.”

And that is how I have experienced Him these last eight years since Mother passed away. He has tucked me under His wings, and it is there I have found unshakable love, affirmation, and yes, confidence.

Both my parents have exemplified God’s love and character to me in so many ways, and I am deeply grateful.

But only God can fill our every need so completely.