This week has been one of weighing priorities. What place does being a wife and a mother take in my life and what does this look like? For some of us, it means bringing home a pay cheque so we can put food on the table. I can’t stay at home all day. And I know that there are others in my same position. I read all over the internet about how being a homemaker is such a high calling, but friends, it is also a privilege, as is the ability to work outside the home but so often the words of others have made me feel like less of a mother because I cannot be with my children every moment of every day. I don’t homeschool, I am not on the Parent Advisory Committee, I don’t sew, knit or make paper maché lobster heads and it is all I can do to be at the Mother’s day tea at the right time on the right day. But I am no less of a mother. I am no less of a mother because I don’t have kitchen dance parties or throw extravagant birthday parties.
Sometimes I think about how other countries view mothers. Have you ever watched the documentary Babies? One night when Ella wouldn’t go to sleep and I wasn’t into watching Signing Time, so I searched through the documentaries to see if there was one appropriate for a four-year-old. The movie follows four babies from four different countries throughout their first year of life. I would say that the parenting styles are as different as the landscape in which they live. Is a child who is raised in a desert in Africa going to be any less or any more of a person than a child raised in New York city?
My mom worked long hours outside the home and my parents divorced when I was six. If you plugged my brother and I into “the formula”, he would be dead and I would be knocked up in a gutter somewhere. I am so grateful for my mother and I am so grateful that she prayed for grace.
You see, because it all comes down to grace. Motherhood is about praying for grace and receiving that grace, not only for yourself but for you child. Motherhood is not about eating everything organic, practicing five hours of music lessons, or disciplining or not disciplining according to whoever is the James Dobson of the day. Motherhood is about grace in giving life, choosing life, loving life and embracing life.
To the working mom,
To the single mom,
To the poor mom,
To the tired mom,
To the sick mom,
To the oppressed mom,
To the mom who has had a child die,
To the mothers waiting for their children to come home.
This Mother’s Day, I pray that you might experience grace.
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