Seeking Support in Times of Loneliness

The author highlighting the joys and challenges of motherhood while searching for spiritual support both within and outside of the ecclesia.

For a long time, I have worked with kids in various ways: teaching Sunday school, babysitting, being an au pair, leading youth events, and professionally as an Occupational Therapist. I was so excited to have my own child and start a family. I remember being thrilled to share the news with my ecclesial family that I was pregnant, and when my son was born, I couldn’t wait for everyone to meet him. I was eager to return to the Breaking of Bread, and just a few weeks after the birth of my son, I went to the meeting for the first time. 

I am naturally an extrovert, so not doing much for the first few days, weeks, and months was hard for me. I was very aware of my new role as a mother, and while I was so in love with my new son, I also felt overwhelmed and a bit clueless. I was happy to return to my ecclesial family but didn’t realize how much attending the meeting would change for me. When will he next need to be fed? Where will I feed him? How will I get the emblems if I’m feeding? All these thoughts ran through my head while simultaneously trying to get spiritual food from the Breaking of Bread service. 

It was (and still is) challenging, and I remember feeling quite uncertain about where I fit in. My new child was a gift from God, but I didn’t feel like I was quickly adjusting to this being my new role in the ecclesial family. Even outside the ecclesial setting, my husband had returned to work, and I felt a bit lost about my new identity as a mother. My son struggled to put on weight in the beginning, and I felt like I was just trying to get through the day learning my new baby and what he needed.

As weeks and months went on, I realized the new normal would be finding it hard to be spiritually fed when attending the meeting. Even now, as my son has just turned two, I am trying to teach him to sit through a Breaking of Bread, which can be exhausting and hilarious. He calls out for family members or other kids, makes animal sounds, and sings. It is a joy, but my mind is focused on teaching him how to sit through the service quietly, so getting nourishment from the exhortation continues to be challenging. My husband often performs a duty with our small ecclesia and cannot always help during this time.

Experiencing the loss of my mother as a late teen has affected me in many ways. Perhaps one of the most profound has been not having her to talk to as I am learning and growing in my role as a mother. I don’t have her support and guidance to lead me in this phase of life. This makes my spiritual family so much more important to me. I look at the mothers and women in mother roles around me, watching how they are raising children and being spiritual leaders to their children. 

There are no other kids around the same age as my son and no other moms in the same stage of life as me currently at our ecclesia. I realized for my own spiritual life, I just wasn’t able to get everything I wanted or needed out of a Sunday morning. I started proactively looking for other things to fill my cup in this new phase of my life. I found a Christian mom’s group at another church and decided to attend. I was immediately welcomed.

We shared food and coffee, watched a video on a spiritual topic, and discussed the video, relating it to our roles as mothers. I have been attending this group for over a year now, and it gives me a little bit of spiritual sustenance and a shared understanding among Christian mothers raising children. Is it ideal? Of course not. I’d love to have a Mom’s group with kids running around at my ecclesia, but that isn’t practical right now, so that is okay. 

I would be amiss if I did not mention how my ecclesia and the individuals around me have supported me because these acts of service and love are invaluable to me. One of the best things has been our ecclesia assigning funds to revamp our nursery space. Since we run a Zoom meeting, we bought a TV for the nursery, and I can watch the service when I have to be in the nursery with my son.

The rest of the room is also a much more practical space for me to be in, for which I am immensely grateful. Other things that have been so helpful to me are when people helped pack boxes or took my son to the park when we moved houses, people who brought meals when my son was born, those who took a shift to look after my son during the meeting, ones who met up for coffee, those who watched my son so I could eat lunch during potlucks, those who cooked a meal and gave it to us when we were sick, and those who watched our son so my husband and I can go on a date. 

These outpourings of love mean the world to me in this season of life. The love shown to my family is one of the greatest gifts. This love is a taste of the love God has for us and the love I want my son to feel. This phase of my life is about teaching my son about God and nurturing his spiritual life. Our ecclesia is great at showing love to children, and I know at age two that my son already feels that unconditional love that God shows us.

Just last week, we went to the meeting on a Saturday for an event, and as soon as we entered the parking lot, my son realized where he was and let out an excited “Yesss!” Seeing his joy is the greatest gift as a mother. To see my son excited to be at our ecclesia and know the love he has from others and God is a great joy. 

Naomi Gallagher,
San Francisco Peninsula Ecclesia, CA