Love Like a Mother

Weaving into the account her own alternately funny and touching motherhood anecdotes, Berget makes a strong case for eschewing reductive framings of God as a “dominant, masculine deity” for a more holistic notion that centers love, protection, and creation. This will be a balm for new and experienced moms alike.

Elizabeth Berget is exactly the warm, witty, and wise guide moms need—that rare writer whose words feel like friendship. She invites each of us to encounter God as mother, and our faith is deepened by the maternal love we find in Scripture together.

Where has this book been all my life? I don’t say this lightly: Elizabeth Berget has unlocked a profound new framework for viewing the love of God. I was moved to tears twice out of sheer awe and astonishment. Reading Love like a Mother felt like turning over a diamond and discovering a whole new facet of God’s fierce devotion, gentle affection, and divine love for us. I want to get this book into the hands of every mother I know.

I believe we all benefit from seeing God beyond exclusively masculine imagery, and Love like a Mother is an excellent guide. Elizabeth artfully and carefully goes beyond a simplistic sense of mothering—for example, moms care and God cares—into a fuller, more dynamic, and deeply biblical view. What a wonderful contribution this book is: a gift for anyone who wants to know God better.

Love like a Mother is a visceral, moving, and profoundly insightful book. Elizabeth Berget weaves Scripture together with the everyday realities of motherhood in ways that surprised me, challenged me, and taught me so much. Her reflections expand our understanding of God through the lens of maternal love: tender, embodied, and deeply human. I found myself nourished and seen; my heart expanded with love for my children, for other mothers, and for God.

As a father, my eyes were opened by this book to the sacred beauty of nurturing and raising a family. Elizabeth Berget writes with wisdom and honesty, turning our eyes to the heart of God with a depth that invites all readers to see divine love in new and tender ways. This book is a gift.

If you can’t bring yourself to read another book about a white male God but still ache for a God you can trust, Elizabeth Berget is your modern-day Christian mystic. Her tender, biblical theology is steeped in the universal languages of attachment, birth, and motherhood. This book reignited my holy imagination and helped me connect my evolving identity with a never-changing God. Seeing God in the mother and the mother in God changes everything. What we do as mothers matters, and Elizabeth gets it.