motherhood/family/parenting

That one-year-old, chubby little boy presses his body into mine, head limp on my shoulder, arms clutching my neck. He isn’t sleepy, he just woke. He’s in love. With me. Ahh…..God is whispering.

We played peek-a-boo and he laughed out loud, sheer delight over the simplest thing. My baby. Learning, somehow through this simple game, and I want to be the one playing it, teaching.

My baby turning boy turning man. Quickly!

A thousand small things a day. His smiling when I give him food, the assurance of safety and provision. But God is whispering to me (“I will provide for all your needs.”).

I don’t want to be too busy for his “just because” snuggles. They are quick, sporadic and I want to catch them when they come. But not just that….I want to feel them with all the mother-love within me, knowing that part of this gift of motherhood is God’s whispering, through this baby, of His love for me.

Is it any wonder so many parents don’t know how to parent? It isn’t their fault. We have separated the events of life, isolated children from the daily observation of adulthood, and in so doing, taken from them the most fundamental learning tools, resulting in adults who don’t know a lot about real life.

My mother has had over three dozen children. She gave birth to two, but giving birth isn’t really what makes one a mother, is it?

It’s the hard stuff. The stuff my mother has done over half her life, with little accolades and with no earthly payment. The mother-stuff.

And the most important of her jobs? BEING THERE. Being available….the heart of what it means to serve.

She never thought of being anywhere else. She was a wife and mother, and she was needed. Still is. And she is still there…available. Serving. That’s my mother.

My mother and I are hardly anything alike. I actually inherited far more of my father’s qualities, which made my mother’s life more…challenging, and I’ll leave it at that.

I wish so much to be more like my mother–more sacrificial, more in tune to needs around me, more willing to place my needs and wants behind those of my family.

Yes, my mother is amazing.

She’d rather be in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes than talking politics around the table. She’d rather serve the food than mingle with the guests. And regardless of what she’d rather be doing, she does what needs doing because that’s what  mothers do.

My dad is strong, wise and capable. And yet he is only half a man without my mother. She completes him because she serves him. She completes our family because she serves us.

There will be a gaping hole in our lives when my mother isn’t in it.

I’m so grateful to have had a mother available for me, willing to lose her life every day.

I rise up and call her blessed while it is Today.

A good follow-up, I think, from my recent post that received so much commentary.

It’s this that I just cannot get past…that we (as a whole) get literally angry over the blaring, obvious fact that families need mothers…that it’s good for a nation to think this way. Some of you are mad just because I said that.

It’s this excerpt from the excellent article linked below, that resonates with me. Not debating over “when and if and how” and “it’s not fair”, but acknowledging what is good for us and our families, which will facilitate a movement toward making that more possible for more women.  And when we are about what is good for all of us rather than what “I want”, it’s just makes sense.

“The mentality which honors women more for their work outside the home than for their work within the family must be overcome. This requires that men should truly esteem and love women with total respect for their personal dignity, and that society should create and develop conditions favoring work in the home…” John Paul II

Hear me: it’s not an attempt to “make women feel bad” who, for some reason, just are not able to be home. It’s about a collective agreement that would cause the whole of us to do what we can to support a woman home whose family needs her. Because this is what happens…if our mentality is off-base (“it doesn’t matter–there is no change in the climate of home whether mom is there or not”, etc.), then there’s a break down of  truth that hinders mothers from even being able to do their jobs. Churches and families (the first line of defense during a financial crisis)  cease to consider their need to help and encourage mothers to be home. “Go get a job like everyone else” is the default response. But not the right one. We destroy ourselves (collectively) when we don’t promote the truth, which in turn, causes us to behave wrongly.

Do yourself a favor and read all of  Controversy over the obvious? New Cardinal says it’s best for women to stay home with their children