A few nights ago, our newest 12-year-old mama at Village of Hope gave birth to her beautiful baby boy.
After so many times in the delivery room, there’s one sound etched into my heart—one I’ve heard again and again from the girls we’ve cared for: a desperate cry out for their mother.
The very mother who, in most cases, betrayed them or failed to protect them.
These cries undo me. They echo in my heart long after the moment has passed, because a mother is every child’s first line of defense—the one they’re most bonded to, the one they trust to keep them safe, the one they usually tell first when something goes wrong. When that first line of defense is breached, a child is left painfully vulnerable.
And yet, no matter how imperfect a mother may be, one thing I’ve witnessed over the past 13 years is this: every child still longs for their mother.
Then I look at their sweet babies—newborns, crying out instinctively for their mother. And I watch these girls, still children themselves, holding their babies close. Something shifts. There’s a quiet resolve in their eyes, an unspoken promise that this story will be different. That they will fight to be the safe place their own parents never were. That they will break the cycle.
And it’s in that raw longing, in that cry for a love that failed them, that I’ve witnessed another cry rise up—the cry to Jesus.
The cry to the One who never abandons. The One who never betrays. The One who never fails.
And He comes.
He comes into the delivery room. He comes into the trauma. He comes into the midnight hours when fear overwhelms. He comes with arms wide open, ready to be the refuge and the safe place every child longs for.
And it’s there—in His presence—that broken stories begin to transform into testimonies of hope. Because where parents may fall short, our Savior never does.
Credit – original owner ( respect 🫡)