I wasn’t expecting the Holy Spirit to speak so powerfully through a book about Heaven, especially one that found its way to me with such little effort. My usual method while on retreat is to spend a good hour (or three) poring over the shelves of the monastery library, aiming for some title that seems wholly relevant to my life circumstances – all while trying, and failing, to avoid falling into analysis paralysis.

As it happened, a friend had just lent me Peter Kreeft’s book, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven, and though it was June, which seemed to me to be the wrong time, liturgically-speaking, to be thinking about such topics, I was drawn in. Several dozen pages later, unconcerned about the steamy southern afternoon causing sweat beads to roll down my back despite the gazebo’s shade, I was struck with a thought that broke open my mind. Rather, it turned it upside down. Or right side up. And I haven’t looked at anything in the same way since.

Motherhood is an attribute of God. A big realization! God made everything – He is the Creator. All the beauty that surrounds me – the blades of grass, the cows, the stones, the sunsets, the sunflowers – all is from Him, and all reflects His beauty in different ways. Motherhood is the same. It comes from Him, and each human female reflects His motherhood in a different way.  The way He has for me to express it is unique to me; because He made me in His image and likeness. It cannot be otherwise. I wrote in my journal, Motherhood, femininity, womanhood, are not ‘in me’. I am ‘in them.’

I think of myself differently now. I see that God made me female, and because of that, He calls me to express His maternal love. He also called me to the vocation of marriage with my husband James, so the expression of my maternity will occur in and through our marital love. This is not lesser than the calling of a religious sister or of a married mother of many children; it is just unique to me. 

I have a mission to live out this maternal love in my personal context. I continue to listen to the Holy Spirit about how to carry it out in the specifics. Who is He calling me to love? Who is He calling me and my husband to pray for, to serve, to share the blessings of our mutual love? Are we listening?

Since that moment in the gazebo, I have had much more freedom from the heaviness of infertility than I ever thought possible. I no longer think of myself as “infertile” or of our marriage as lacking something really important. On the contrary, I truly, deeply believe that we are blessed beyond measure. I suppose that what ultimately changed is that I’ve become grateful. I’m grateful for my life, that God created me as a human female, to express Him in a unique way – for my marriage, for the freedom we have, for the beauty in our life. 

There was a calligraphy print in the gift shop of the monastery that I wish I’d bought (overthinking strikes again!); it read, “Anyone can count the seeds in an apple. Only God can count the apples in a seed.” This expresses that little moment of clarity that changed my life on that June day. The world, and my life circumstances, often seem upside down, but God is always right side up. He sees me as His Creation, meant to reflect His beauty in a unique, particular way that only I can. And the same is true for you, dear reader. Trust that He loves you, that He has called you. The reality of your motherhood is intrinsic to who you are as a human female made in His image – it is not outside of you, but inside of you. It is like the apple, already present in the seed before it is ever planted. God had a thought in mind for your motherhood from the very beginning of your creation.

The specifics of that reality are less important – the important thing is that you cannot be otherwise. Stay close to Him and He will show you. Pray and ask for His clarity. Try to surrender the desires of your heart to Him every day, and trust that He knows how to bring about the most beautifully fruitful version of motherhood in you. It may involve a physical baby, or it may not. It may involve a beautiful motherhood of souls in some other fashion. It will definitely involve your husband, because you’re married! Where does God desire your maternal love to go? Who but you could bring it there?

Allie Kleineck has been married to her husband James since 2016 and writes from Central Texas.