By Jennifer Alsup
A mother is more than the duties she performs. She is not just an audience, cook, nurse, storyteller, chauffeur, and teacher. She is the one who dries away tears and makes all the hurts feel better. She corrects mistakes and comforts the broken heart. To her child, a mother is everything good rolled into one irreplaceable package. To that child, she is the most important person in the world. But what happens if she goes missing?
In P.D. Eastman’s Are You My Mother?, a mother bird flies away to secure food for her baby. When he hatches, he realizes his mother is missing and goes on a journey asking everyone and everything he finds, “Are you my mother?” He becomes frantic, knowing his very real need for his mother is unfulfilled. In the end, he is placed back in the nest and his mother returns with food, oblivious to his plight. This scenario is played out all too often in our world as mothers try to achieve balance between their desire to provide what they feel their families need and their longing to be there for their families. They busy themselves doing things in which they see importance, but miss out on the bigger need––their children’s need for their presence. Many women inadvertently neglect the seemingly mundane, but infinitely important task of simply being Mom. Sadly, real life doesn’t always have the happy ending found in Are You My Mother?
The absence of mothers in the home, whether a physical absence or the practical absence of a mother who is physically there, robs children of a precious example of God’s love. God comforted the children of Israel with reminders that He loved them like a nursing mother, saying He would always be there with them and care for them (Isaiah 49:15, 66:13). Too many children today have a hard time relating to the idea of a mother like this ––one who is always there, who is fully invested in them and who is the go-to person in their lives for comfort, guidance and love. Lacking an example of this kind of love, children may misunderstand the love that God has for them. He cares for us far better than any earthly mother could, but He expects mothers to show love like His to their children. We cannot successfully complete this task if our time, energy, and focus are spent elsewhere.
In many ways our children are like the talents in the parable Jesus told (Matthew 25:14-30). God has given them to us to care for and turn into something more for Him. Let’s not “bury” them by simply filling their minds and time with worldly pursuits or allowing others to do so in our absence. When we allow others to fill our role as “the one” in the early years of a child’s life, we are missing the most crucial time for pointing out that God is the reason for everything. Children are never as eager to soak up every word we pour out as they are in this early period of development. Later, they lack the same level of interest in our answers to their constant questions. If we aren’t engaged now, we miss the opportunity to answer those in-the-moment questions altogether. God gives us this time to lay the foundation for Him to later build on. By foregoing these moments, we lose opportunities to fulfill our purpose of bringing our children to a greater knowledge of God.
God’s plan for mothers is for us to instruct our children in His ways, to love and be there for them, and to set the example for the next generation (Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Psalm 78:5; Proverbs 22:6; Ephesians 6:4). Many of us fail to see that in God’s eyes, being “just a mom” is enough. Not only is it enough, it is a monumental undertaking that can only be successfully accomplished if we partner with Him and follow His plan to ensure that His Kingdom grows. We must take the time to assess our priorities and align them with God’s. The key question we must ask ourselves is this: Do the decisions I make about how I use my time give me more or fewer opportunities to store up God’s Word in the heart of my child and teach him what he needs to know about Jesus?
Overflowing calendars are not just a problem of working mothers. Moms who stay home with their children can also fall prey to the idea that motherhood is not enough. Our days can become so filled with activities to provide a balanced upbringing for our children, that we fail to take time to actually bring them up. At the end of the day, too many mothers go to bed without having had that focused face-to-face time that all children crave. We can become so distracted by doing good things for our children that, like the mother bird, we lose sight of what they really need. Our children’s most pressing need is not a “supermom,” the presiding over the PTA, churning out Pinterest projects, and volunteering in all the local charities; their most pressing need is a mother who is present.
Prioritizing our use of time is not the only area of life in which we fail to use God’s standard as our own. We sometimes fail to measure the true successfulness of our parenting or of our children’s accomplishments in spiritual terms. Instead, we run into the snare of thinking success can only be measured in terms of wealth, fame, or worldly achievement. Of course we want our children to be happy, to have secure jobs and healthy families, but what is the value in those things if their souls are not His (Mark 8:36)? If we have prepared our children for success with tutoring, piano lessons, soccer, and SAT prep courses, but have failed to prepare them for a life of spiritual warfare by giving them the armor they need to be strong soldiers for Christ, able to stand and defend their faith against Satan’s fiery darts (Ephesians 6:10-17), have we actually succeeded in motherhood?
When we do use each day to properly attend our children’s needs and to plant God’s Word in their hearts, the results will be amazing. Jochebed was able to rear and teach Moses for only a few short years before he was no longer under her care. In that brief time, she instilled in him a love for God and for His people. Moses’s faith was strong enough to choose the right path, even in the face of all the sin around him (Hebrews 11:25). Jochebed’s example shows how strong a foundation can be laid by taking every opportunity to direct even very young children toward Heaven. It also reveals, in stark contrast, the lack of, and need for, such mothers today.
Women are more than capable of achieving greatness in almost any area of life. Some women juggle a career, family, hobbies, and their spiritual lives with amazing balance. The ones who do it well understand their responsibility to train up their children, constantly pointing them towards God, and they enlist Him as a partner in parenting. They remember that the life for which they prepare their children has little to do with grades or income, but is rather the life after this mortal one. No matter how full their schedules get, they put the most important things––God and family––first, even if something else has to drop, temporarily, to make that happen.
Certainly, every family has a different range of needs and personalities. Not every mother has the same amount of time to devote to each of her children. Thus, there is no universal approach to motherhood. There is, however, a universal need for mothers and a heavenly Father who is calls us to mold our children for Him. Take the time to be more present for your children today than you were yesterday. If you are present every day, be encouraged, knowing that your labor is crucial to God’s kingdom. The legacy of a godly mother follows her well beyond her years on this earth. We have so little time to mold and shape our children’s hearts, preparing them for a life of service to God in the hostile world around them. We must constantly, consciously, be about the business of mothering.
