God used an unsettling and uncertain season in my mothering journey to teach me one of my most powerful roles as a mother. And this role isn’t just for my kids.
I learned the significance of encouragement in a season when one of my sons walked away from the Lord. He didn’t wander slowly or subtly, but in a way that felt sudden and disorienting. He was in his twenties, making decisions I couldn’t control and choosing a life that didn’t reflect who I knew him to be. As a mom, it was terrifying. What do you do when the child you raised is walking in a direction you would have never chosen for them? I couldn’t correct it or manage it. I couldn’t sit him down and fix it. He was grown, and I was left standing in that tension so many of us know: watching, praying, and holding what I was seeing in one hand and what I believed to be true in the other.
But I knew my son. I knew he had the heart of a pastor. I knew he was a gatherer of people. I knew he had creative hands. I had raised him, and I had eyes for who he was even when he forgot.
Early in that season, God began to meet me very specifically through His Word. He brought me back again and again to promises about children, identity, and return: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6) “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” (James 5:16) And of course, the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15 reminded me that sons can wander, but they can also come home. Scripture became an anchor, steadying what my heart struggled to hold onto.
Alongside Scripture, God began to give me very specific words about my son. Not vague encouragement, but clear direction for how I was to see him. He told me my son would walk closely with Him again, that he would come back to life. He gave me the image of a tree in winter—completely bare, cold, still—and yet not dead, because spring was coming. “This is your son. Your son will return to Life.”
For years, I carried those words while watching choices that didn’t reflect what God had told me. Everything in front of me looked barren. There was no life. That was the tension. I was listening to what God said, seeing what was actually happening, and learning how to hold both.
What marked that season most was that God didn’t just ask me to hold those words. He gave them to me so I could speak them. I spoke them to my son, even when his ears felt spiritually closed. When he said things that didn’t line up with who he was, I responded with the truth God had given me and with what I knew to be true about him. When he minimized himself or defined himself by that season, I reminded him—specifically—of what had not changed.
I would tell him: “You belong to God, whether you feel it right now or not.” “I know who you are. This season doesn’t erase that.” “You are someone who belongs to God.” “This is not the end of your story.”
I wasn’t ignoring reality. I was speaking into it. I was speaking life into what looked barren. I was speaking to him as someone in process, not someone finished. And I did it without seeing immediate change.
Looking back, I can see what was happening more clearly. I was holding close who my son was, listening for God’s heart, paying attention to what He was showing me, carrying it, and then speaking it at the right moments. I was blessing who my son was becoming instead of reacting only to who he was in that season. At the same time, I was learning to release the outcome. My words were not a way to control him; they were a way to partner with what God was already doing.
That season changed how I understand encouragement. Encouragement is not just something kind we say when it crosses our mind. It is the practice of holding close who we know someone is, asking God how He sees them, and then putting words to it. It is speaking life over people, especially when they cannot see it for themselves. It is reminding them who they are and whose they are in the middle of the gap between where they are and who they are becoming.
This is what spiritual motherhood often looks like. Part of our role is to carry people before the Lord, to notice them, to pray over them, and to ask God who they really are. This includes our children, but it also extends to our husbands, our friends, the people we lead, and the people God places in our lives for a season.
In Luke 2:19, it says that Mary “treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.” She paid attention, and she held what she saw. There is something in that for us. We are invited to listen, observe, and gather truth from Scripture, from prayer, and from what we see.
We hold the truth close so we are ready to speak when the moment comes.
There will be moments when people forget, when they lose perspective, when what is true feels far away. In those moments, we have something to offer—something we have chosen to remember and hold close.
There are people in your life right now who need that kind of encouragement. Not vague words, but specific, grounded truth. Ask the Lord who you are walking with, what He is showing you about them, what is true that they may have forgotten—and then say it.
Encouragement is a gift. It is a way of seeing people the way God sees them and speaking life into them while they are still becoming.