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Journeys To Mother Love

~ Encouragement and healing in mother/child relationships

Journeys To Mother Love

Category Archives: God as our parent

Not Forsaken

12 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by Catherine Lawton in Adopted children, childhood memories, emotional needs, God as our parent, grief and loss, losing mom too soon, Remembering Mother, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Abandonment, Adoption, Grief Loss and Bereavement, Mother

Imogene-just-adopted

I watched an Irish movie that brought tears to my eyes and reminded me of my mother’s story. The movie was based on a true story of an impoverished family where the mother dies and the father runs off and doesn’t care of the children, who are taken into custody by the state and placed in orphanages.

The same thing happened to my mother and her siblings, only it wasn’t in Ireland. It was in Colorado. She was the age my littlest granddaughter is now—almost two years old—when she and her siblings were taken into custody by the Otero County Court. The judge declared them “neglected children” and wards of the state until age 21. Mother’s one sister and two brothers were sent to the Denver Children’s Home, but just in time a childless couple adopted her. And though she never saw her siblings again, she was raised by loving Christian parents and grew up to be a self-sacrificing, loving pastor’s wife. This is an old photo of her the day she was adopted. Her adoptive parents found her dirty and frightened.

Some things have come full circle. Since I moved back to Colorado, I have found Mother’s birth family.  Our son, who is a lawyer, has done pro bono work representing neglected children who have no legal representation.

Though Mother has been gone from us over 38 years now, I never want to forget how God rescued a sad little girl whose mother had died of TB and whose father had run off to find work or something in that dust bowl era. I never want to take for granted the way God rescues us, provides for us, gives us people to love and be loved by.

I remember Mother smiling through tears of blessing as she sang, “A tent or a cottage, why should I care? They’re building a mansion for me over there. Though exiled from home, yet still I will sing, All glory to God, I’m a child of the King.”

~Catherine Lawton

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Hannah Whitall Smith Comparing God’s Love to Mother Love

06 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by Catherine Lawton in encouraging each other, generations coming together, God as our parent, God's healing love, God's love and Mother love, Motherhood, Parenting, Remembering Mother

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God the Father, Modeling the faith, mother and daughter, Our children see God in us, Parenting, Sacrificial love

“I do long to be to my children a little faint picture of what God is,” wrote Hannah Whitall Smith to her daughter. This 19-Century writer of classic books of devotion, such as The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, kept up personal correspondence with many people through letters. Many of her letters are published in the book, The Christian’s Secret of a Holy Life. Here’s a letter Hannah Whitall Smith wrote to her daughter Mary:

Your loving praise is very sweet to me, even though I may think you look through eyes made kinder by love than they by rights ought to be. If only you can learn some little sense of what God is from your thoughts of me, I shall be more than content. I think I have learned more about the character of God from remembering what my own father and mother were to me than in almost any other way. And I do long to be to my children a little faint picture of what God is.

O great heart of God! whose loving

Cannot hindered be, nor crossed;

Will not weary, will not even

In our death itself be lost!

Love divine! of such great loving

Only mothers know the cost,

Cost of love, that, past all loving,

Gave itself to save the lost.

I think I understand this.

As mothers, we have the opportunity to understand God’s self-giving love and know a little of the cost of love.

Our perseverance in loving at all costs will provide our children a clearer picture of the great, self-giving love that God has for them.

~Catherine Lawton

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If Your Child is a Prodigal

05 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by guestmom in Alice Scott-Ferguson, challenges of motherhood, expectations, Free to Love, God as our parent, Guest Post, Parenting, reconciliation, the healing journey

≈ 1 Comment

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a heart filled with love and hope, Courage to be honest, Finding our identity, Forgiveness, Forgiving yourself, God the Father, kids leaving home, letting go, Mothering, no false guilt or shame, Parenting, the prodigal child

Rembrandt_Harmensz._van_Rijn_-_The_Return_of_the_Prodigal_SonDo you know the pain of mothering a prodigal?

If ever a situation poured self-recrimination, regret, and remorse on a mother, it is this one. Whether or not we have contributed to the child leaving home, faith, church, and even in some cases, God, our child has made a decision that we must respect. — We must not chide ourselves over our children’s autonomous choices.

Mention of the mother is missing in the most famous account of a prodigal, told by Luke in his gospel. Most likely she was there, though. Author Henri Nouwen explains that he sees the mother in the hands of the father in Rembrandt’s painting of The Prodigal (above):

“The father’s left hand touching the son’s shoulder is strong and muscular. How different is the father’s right hand! It lies gently upon the son’s shoulder—to offer consolation and comfort. It is a mother’s hand.” (quoted from The Return of the Prodigal, Image Book, 1992)

One mother admitted that it was easier for her husband to accept their daughter’s return than it was for her. Her struggle exemplifies the unrealistic responsibility mothers tend to assume for the destiny of their children. “What will people say about me as a mother?”

The prodigal may represent one of the hardest trials of a mother’s heart. But after we have cried an ocean and wailed into the dark silence of the night, hope in God. He is the heavenly Parent and is willing to wait, knowing that we all must come to an end of our own self-sufficiency before we become truly dependent on Him and not ourselves.

Let the prodigal process have its way. It is far more important for your wandering child to find the Father, than for your child to make you look good.

Henri Nouwen says that we are all prodigals if we are looking for our approval and acceptance from anywhere other than God. That includes mothers. Are we looking for the commendation of the church, family, or community that we want to impress with our perfect family, while our prodigal causes us shame and embarrassment? Then we too are being profligate in terms of our relationship with our heavenly Father, since we are looking for our identity outside of Christ. When our self identity is extricated from that of our child’s, then we are freed to love enough to let them go. We can let our reputation slide and learn our own utter dependence on God while we wait for our prodigal child to learn it as well.

We have no need to pretend in order to gain either the approval of God or man. We have no need to hide our pain or the less than perfect places and people in our lives.

“Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not ‘mine,’ but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I am not going to go back on that” (Galatians 2).


Alice Scott-Ferguson is a Scottish-born freelance writer, author, and motivational speaker who lives in Arizona. She writes from her heart as a wife, mother, grandmother, and Christ-follower. Among other books, she is the author of Mothers Can’t Be Everywhere, But God Is : A Liberating Look at Motherhood, from which this post is extracted.

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Helicopter Mom, You’re Creating a Draft

04 Monday May 2015

Posted by guestmom in challenges of motherhood, frustration to freedom, God as our parent, Guest Post, hovering and controlling, mother wounds, Motherhood, Parenting

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kids leaving home, letting go, Modeling the faith, Mothering, Parenting, Women's Issues

 Bomba_heli

Controlling for Take-Off

When my daughter was raising little ones, I first heard of the helicopter analogy. It paints a picture of a fussing, overly solicitous mom who is fearful to let Tommy toddler try anything new without the constant whirring of her benevolent blades. Then, just as the helicopter hovers over its occupants even after they have disembarked, so we often continue trying to control our children even when they are grown and gone, creating the kind of draft that causes our offspring to duck out of the way. The current is often so great that they feel helpless to be free of its influence—an influence that haunts them and continues to disturb their adult lives. If they do get away, they don’t come back.

Guest-Post-logo

We hover because we think we can preside over all the eventualities of our children’s lives. Of course genuine, responsible guidance is essential, especially to ensure the physical welfare of a small child. But we often go beyond what’s necessary, thinking that if only we stay near to oversee, then we will be able to make sure no evil befalls them.

We are often unaware that the draft we cause with our fussing actually blows our children off course and out of the wind of the Spirit who is directing their lives. Someone once compiled a list of a few examples of how our natural proclivities as mothers sometimes get in the way of the greater good:

•    Being a mother is wanting to pick up your children each time they fall, but teaching them to pick themselves up instead.
•    Being a mother is wanting to keep them from all hurt and harm, but knowing that they must be taught to take care of themselves.
•    Being a mother is wanting to give them the best of everything, but knowing they will value life more if they wait and work for many of their rewards.

My own mothering life is replete with illustrations of yours truly as Helicopter Mom. Many years ago, one of our sons was living alone some distance from us, where he was working just before going to college. From every communication I had with him, it appeared that his life was one catastrophe after another. Following one telephone conversation, I slumped down into the chair saying, “God, please do something.”

The response was swift and searing: “I will, if you get out of the way!”

I was dumbfounded. God could do it!—without my fretting, cajoling, or even sending care packages. And He did. In the heavenly Parent’s own good time, all the issues were resolved—car finally up and running, rent money provided, fingers healed from a nasty accident—and my son took another step on the journey of trusting the God who is everywhere, rather than a mother who is not.

Our love is limited and lacks the divine perspective. As such, our attempts to control can result in over-involvement in our children’s lives that ranges from the ridiculous, like the mother who wanted to go on her daughter’s honeymoon, to the more sinister situation of the son who felt constrained to call his mother when sexual temptation with his fiancée threatened to overtake him. Such was the extent of the toxicity in that unhealthy mother-son relationship. Kenneth M. Adams poses a piercing question for our consideration:

Did you have a parent whose love for you felt more confining than freeing, more demanding than giving, more intrusive than nurturing?

We are in a wonderfully privileged position, and we may well be our child’s best, and most trusted, friend. We do have the responsibility to be available to listen, guide, and model, but our best efforts cannot preside over every outcome. Our calling is simply to stand, confident of the supremacy of God as their perfect Parent. If we stand still, we do not create unwanted currents.

We do the best by our children when we cultivate calmness and model faith instead of fretting and manipulating. As we learn to relinquish our need for control, we are free to love more unconditionally and lend support, rather than running to the rescue. When we allow our children, no matter how little they are, to take responsibility for their own behaviors, we facilitate the flow of health, wholeness, and wisdom in their lives. Dorothy Canfield Fisher, an eighteenth-century writer, rightly said, “A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.”

Let’s start early to lift off in our helicopters so our children can run clear of the whirring blades and have the opportunity to know only the wind of God’s Spirit as their guiding force.


Alice Scott-Ferguson is a Scottish-born freelance writer, author, and motivational speaker who lives in Arizona. She writes from her heart as a wife, mother, grandmother, and Christ-follower. Among other books, she is the author of Mothers Can’t Be Everywhere, But God Is : A Liberating Look at Motherhood, from which this post is extracted.

Mothers-Cover-Web

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Orphaned or Adopted? ~ Reflections on Easter Sunday

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by ardisanelson in Adopted children, encouraging each other, God as our parent, Jesus on the cross

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Adoption, Emotional and spiritual healing, Finding our identity, future hope, God the Father, God's promises, life and death

cross

We all have parents, whether we physically knew them or not. In my case, I knew both of my parents, growing up in a home where they both lived until I was nine. It was at that point that they divorced. My mother, my two brothers and me moved 2,000 miles away so we could be near my mother’s relatives.

Saying goodbye that day to my father on the plane was a very painful experience. It was back in the day when non-ticketed friends and family could go beyond the security check-point at the airport. My father walked us all onto the plane and paid special attention to me. Through my tears I could hear him reassuringly say, “Everything is going to be ok. You need to be a big girl now and take care of your mother.”

That was not my first taste of abandonment, but it’s the one I remember most. My previous taste of abandonment was when my mother had her nervous breakdown when I was six years old. She didn’t choose to abandon me, but the effects of that event led me to never really knowing my mother as a person.

Those two abandonments early on in my life left me seeking to fill the void in my heart in unhealthy ways. I tried throughout my teens and into adulthood to win my father’s approval—to feel important in his eyes. Worse than that were the choices I made to rebel against God. Thankfully God has redeemed the pain of my youth and beyond.

When I grew up—I mean really grew up emotionally on the inside—not my physical age, I started to recognize and label these abandonments for what they were and the affects they had on me. Now that both of my parents are gone (going on two years), a friend who recently lost the second of her parents asked me if I feel (or felt) like an orphan after they passed.

Her question gave me an opportunity to reflect on that very point. We talked about it a bit. My response was ‘no’. I can certainly understand how one would feel that way. However, for me, I led the life of an orphan most of my adult life. As I actively turned to Christ in the last decade or so, I learned more about my significance to God and the role the Body of Christ was intended to play in my life. I built relationships with other women who were also hungry for God and seeking to become the women He designed them to be.

I was no longer orphaned; I was adopted. I was adopted into the Body of Christ and was now part of His family.  Romans 8:14-16 tells us:  For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.  The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba,Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

With that adoption comes a responsibility to live life as God designed. Easter Sunday is a marker of that adoption for all who accept Christ as their Savior. Our adoption certificates are signed with his blood. Let us not take that for granted.

Regardless of the relationship you had or didn’t have with your parents, may you embrace the love of our Heavenly Father and His physical representatives on earth as your family.

~ Ardis A. Nelson

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Generations of Blessing

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in generational patterns, God as our parent, Gratitude, importance of prayer, Influence of Grandparents, leaving a legacy, the healing journey

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a heart filled with love and hope, authentic relationship, Christian spirituality, Family, future hope, God the Father, life stages, Modeling the faith, Praying for our children

Grandchild-1A few years ago, when my daughter-in-law was pregnant with our first grandchild, I sat in church as she and our son participated in the worship team—David playing guitar and Hannah singing. I thought of the baby Hannah was carrying—just past her first trimester. I watched the parents-to-be standing before the Lord and the congregation pouring forth the praise, proclaiming their faith with all their energies, their hearts, their voices.

It dawned on me that the baby—who by now had formed arms and legs—would be sensing this devotion and somehow experiencing the glory and presence of God.

Gratitude and joy rose within me, and the Lord assured my heart that His hand was already on that child as it has been on past generations; that the devotion and faithfulness of the parents would bear fruit in the children, again.

When my mother carried me, she and Daddy—just 20 and 25 years old—were preaching and praying and singing and piano playing. Honestly, I think the “language” of music and prayer were the first languages with which I became familiar.

Twenty-four years later I carried David and, during those nine months, often sat at the piano playing classical music, church music, choir music, and quartet music. My husband was singing; we were often in the midst of praying. And though we had struggles within and without, our faith was bedrock, rooted in “the ground of our being,” deeper even than the dark, moist bed of new life, the womb.

And now it comes to me like a revelation that God is continuing His faithfulness, His friendship with us—to the next generation, to our grandchildren! What a reward, what a hope, what a comfort, what a joy!

Alone at home the next day, Monday, I thought on this again, and the Holy Spirit moved my heart to rejoice and weep and pray for this new life. A sort of sing-song prayer came to me, and I wrote the words out in poem form:

God Bless the Baby
~
Oh, sweet baby,
Little baby Lawton,
Baby, do you hear it?
Hear your mama singing?
Hear your daddy praying?
Baby, do you hear them?
Blessed little baby.
~
God bless Hannah;
Bless her little baby.
Let it hear the singing,
Hear her heart’s devotion;
Make the Maker real,
Present every moment.
~
God bless David;
Bless his little baby.
Let it hear the praying,
Hear the strong assurance,
Feel the Father’s nearness,
There for His baby.
~
Oh, sweet baby,
Little baby Lawton,
Baby, do you hear it?
Hear your daddy singing?
Hear your mama praying?
Baby, do you hear them?
God bless the baby.
~
Amen.

~

–Catherine Lawton

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Can a Child of Unhappy Parents Become a Happy Adult?

30 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by arcecil in confessing our need, emotional needs, encouraging each other, God as our parent, God's healing love, rejecting lies, the healing journey

≈ 1 Comment

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a heart filled with love and hope, authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Family, Finding our identity, life stages, mother and daughter, relationships, Sadness

A mother holds up her child.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

TRUE HAPPINESS

Recently I was given the honor of preparing and presenting my testimony at the Christian Women’s Club. The club gives each speaker 25 minutes. Reading the entire story straight from the book would take well over an hour. I would have to condense my story. Through this painful process of condensing, the Lord revealed to me a significant personal truth. Perhaps I have been the only one who did not see what was between the lines. I probably needed someone to say, “Oh, I see what you are saying.” And I then I could have responded by asking, “What? Tell me what you see.”

Since no one has been that brave, God decided to step in. I can picture him now, thinking this through: I’ll orchestrate a circumstance that will pull the personal truth out of the text! She has had a glimmer of this fact before, but now she is ready for a deeper revelation.

Our Lord knew I was ready for the bigger picture. So, I began: delete, delete, and delete some more (Oh, some of my favorite parts are falling on the cutting room floor!). Then, I added a few sentences to make up for all the deleted information. First a quote from the book: “As I was my mother’s companion for TV’s ‘Guiding Light,’ I was my father’s silent confidante, ever ready to pour out words of encouragement and comfort whenever he chose to turn and acknowledge me.” Now for the condensed add-on: “As a child, I was powerless to help my mother and father find happiness. So, I determined to someday bring happiness to them. I would lift then up on the shoulders of my happiness.”

Wow! Really? Why didn’t someone point this out to me? So, that’s what I have been doing all these years! I took on the responsibility for my parents’ happiness (and you can imagine how that life-long, self-imposed commitment played out!). Innocent children have an innate, unconditional love for their parents. They want their mother and father to be happy. They experience deep sadness when their mother and/or father is sad.

Recently I went to the downtown part of our city to take care of my mother’s business. She is in a nursing home and, since her money has been spent down, she is on Medicaid. I lingered in a large room with many other people who were also waiting to be escorted to one of the cubicles where they, like me, would speak with their case-worker. All of us, young and old, had a need for financial assistance from the government. At the end of the room were double doors that opened into a hallway. I could hear a voice from around the corner. It was a child’s voice. He was pleading with his mother. He kept repeating the same sentence. “I love you, mommy. I love you, mommy.” I did not hear the mother answer him. Was the child trying to console his mother? Was the mother displaying stress and sadness? (The reasons for being in that place are stressful and sad ones.)

I wanted to get up and go find the child, kneel down in front of him, and say, “I love you. God loves you.” If the situation I overheard was a sample of the child’s relationship with his mother, I cannot help but think: Where is their relationship heading? This child will probably turn from his mother one day in anger (and his anger may be expressed as depression. Once I heard a definition for depression, which spoke of it as being “anger turned inward”).

I am not suggesting we present a happy, go-lucky spirit with our children. That persona is unreal, and our children are as quick to pick up on it as they are the forlorn one. Rather, my message to mothers (and fathers) everywhere is that they can find true happiness in an authentic relationship with God through Jesus Christ. There is absolutely no substitute for this road to true happiness.

I just wish I could kneel in front of every child in the world and say, “I love you. God loves you.” However, we can each kneel in front of our children and say those words. We can live out the life of peace and a quiet joy. I know without any doubt that God the Father loves me. He bends down to me every day and says, “I love you. I love you.” My journey would have been greatly condensed if I had understood this truth earlier, but it has been a long, rambling road with very much between the lines.

To young mothers, I want to say: “Recognize God’s love, respond to it, teach it, and witness it to your children. It is the only genuine gift you can give them.” I am still a mother, and now I am a grandmother. I am real with my children and grandchildren. They have seen me cry in sadness and display justifiable anger on occasion. However, they see someone who is able to accept life’s many bumps in the road because the Father’s love has been realized. I am sure they can hear the echo of the Father’s words: “I love your mother. I love your grandmother.” We can give our children and grandchildren the freedom of not needing to bear the responsibility for our happiness; we can witness the presence in our lives of God, who is the source of our true happiness.

~A.R. (Alice) Cecil

p.s. (I recommend a book by Martyn Lloyd-Jones with the title: True Happiness.)

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I Don’t Know About Tomorrow

10 Friday May 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in childhood memories, God as our parent, losing mom too soon, the healing journey

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God's faithfulness, God's promises, life stages, Mother's Day

Cosmos flowers against a blazing sunset

Mother’s Day is always on a Sunday, and many of my memories of my mother happened on Sundays at church. I practically grew up in church. Often on Sunday mornings, from my perch on a front pew, I’d watch Mother rise from the piano bench to stand behind the pulpit and minister in song with her beautiful soprano voice.

Mother would give a brief testimony of God’s sustaining grace in her life, then convey the music and words of the song with a such a sweet spirit that hearts were softened and prepared to receive Daddy’s biblical message. As Mother sang, she’d often lift one hand in testimony to the words of the song, because she was finding them true in her own life. That was certainly the case when she sang one of her favorites: “I Know Who Holds Tomorrow.”

In Journeys to Mother Love I shared briefly about the fire that burned our house down in the middle of the night when I was four years old, and the resulting trauma I experienced, as well as God’s wonderful provision and healing. I didn’t have space in the book to tell more background of how the Lord prepared Mother for that trial and assured her of his love and presence even as we walked through the flames.

The night of the fire our parents had taken my little sister and me with them to a campmeeting service. In that service a soloist stood and sang a wonderful new song with such anointing that throughout the auditorium people wiped tears from their eyes. Mother was deeply touched and, as she went to sleep that night, the words of the song rang in her mind as if God himself were speaking them to her:

I don’t know about tomorrow; I just live from day to day.

I don’t borrow from its sunshine, for its skies may turn to gray.

I don’t worry o’er the future, for I know what Jesus said;

And today I’ll walk beside Him, for He knows what is ahead.

… And the path that is my portion may be through the flame or flood;

But His presence goes before me, and I’m covered with His blood.

Many things about tomorrow I don’t seem to understand;

But I know who holds tomorrow, and I know who holds my hand.

–words and music by Ira F. Stanphill

Later that night, the one who grabbed my hand and held it tight as we fled fearfully through the burning house was my mother. And the One who held her hand, and had given her an assurance of that only a few hours earlier, was her heavenly Father.

I’m glad Mother was there in my childhood and youth. The One who walked beside her knew about the cancer and suffering and death that lay ahead for her. He knew we would lose her so young. But what she experienced and testified to and taught us continues to hold true for me as I move into uncertainties of my older years: He knows! He holds tomorrow in His hands. And He will continue to hold my hand.

~ Cathy Lawton

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Is Mother’s Day Painful for You?

08 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by ardisanelson in encouraging each other, feeling inadequate, forgiving mom, forgiving yourself, God as our parent, the healing journey

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

experiencing Christ, Finding our identity, Forgiveness, future hope, God's promises, healing of memories, Mother's Day, unresolved hurt

flowers

How many of us, if we were really honest, would admit that we don’t look forward to Mother’s Day? We dread this day devoted to celebrating mothers. It conjures up feelings of inadequacies in our own parenting or maybe how we didn’t live up to the expectations our parents had for us. Maybe it even reminds us of the shame or condemnation we felt at the hands of our parents—especially our mothers.

Mother’s Day isn’t always about bouquets of flowers or a box of chocolates for mom. Sometimes it is filled with bitter memories of a childhood loss due to abusive parents, a longing for the birth mother we never knew, or regrets from things we said or did that can’t be taken back. Maybe your mother has died and you miss her presence in your life.

Those kinds of painful memories can also leave us questioning God or turning our back on him. Ultimately, I think, Mother’s Day can leave us yearning for something more.

What is that something more? It is the filling of the hole in our heart left by unforgiveness and broken dreams. How do we fill it? Maybe we turn to alcohol, drugs or sexual fantasizing; or maybe it is to acceptable forms of addictions like busyness and people pleasing—whatever it takes to make the ache go away. Haven’t we all done it or experienced it to some degree?

To all of you daughters and mothers who are in a painful place this Mother’s Day, I empathize with you; for I used to be there too. Don’t give up hope. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV).

We can choose how we want to react to all of these circumstances. We can choose to walk in the light and hope of Christ, or we can choose to walk in the doom and gloom of the past. The past doesn’t need to define us. We have a choice.

As believers, we belong to the family of God, the body of Christ. If we don’t have a mother who bonded with us or nurtured us in loving ways, we can still get that kind of nurturing from our spiritual family and friends. Our family of birth does not have to define us. It is Christ and the family of God that define our identity.

Every day can be a day to celebrate mothers, if we view it from God’s perspective. Choose joy.

Dear brothers and sisters, I close my letter with these last words: Be joyful. Grow to maturity. Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you (2 Corinthians 13:11, NLT).

~ Ardis A. Nelson

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PRAYING FORWARD

01 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by arcecil in encouraging each other, generations coming together, God as our parent, importance of prayer, leaving a legacy, Parenting, the healing journey

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Abraham, Family, future hope, God the Father, Jesus Christ, Praying for our children

spreading tree

More and more people are interested in their family trees. I believe that’s because we are searching for an identity. Of course, we want our search to reveal an amazing individual or two that we can claim. Perhaps, we can find a great-many-times-over-grandmother or grandfather, who wowed the world by stitching the first flag, signing the Declaration of Independence, or inventing the light bulb. If we found such persons, we would be interested in reading their biographies because we would want to know them on a personal level.

But we would probably find a few skeletons in their closets. Sin and falling short are in all our stories, since we were all born into the family tree of Adam. However, a new tree grew up out of the soil of humanity! This tree is called the Family of God Tree. The trunk is Jesus and the roots are the promises of salvation and justification that were made to Abraham (Romans 4:16). Through belief in Jesus, we are branches that were cut from that first tree and grafted into the new tree. Our roots no longer go back to Adam!

We are no longer as interested in finding an amazing person in history; our main interest is in the person of Jesus Christ and our personal relationship with him. That being said, there is still a desire to search in our family tree. Now, we search for a different reason. Who among the members of our personal family tree had a relationship with God through Jesus Christ? The answer to this question is important, because, through their faith, they were instrumental in grafting us into the Family of God Tree.

Mothers (and fathers) may pray for their children, grandchildren and all the future, unborn children in their family lines. When we carry on this sacred tradition, we are praying forward all the future generations. A prayer of this nature can read, “Dear heavenly Father, may our children and grandchildren be protected in their youth; may they grow to know, love, and serve you. May they marry godly men and women and raise their children to know, love, and serve you.”

There were many mothers and fathers praying for us between Abraham and us. In fact, Abraham was praying for us! He prayed for all his children, all those stars in the sky (Genesis 22:17), and each believer is one of them (Galatians 3:7)! In heaven, there will be a great family reunion. We will know those persons, who prayed for us. Besides seeing them, we will see the faceless, nameless children who will come after us. They will then be known to us, and we will be known to them.

There is a family identity for all those whose faith roots go back to Abraham. God is our Father and our identity is found in the Promise Fulfilled, Jesus Christ.

~ Alice Cecil

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Nature or Nurture?

29 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by kyleen228 in Adopted children, God as our parent, God's healing love, Parenting

≈ 3 Comments

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Adoption, Family, Finding our identity

English: Apples on an apple-tree. Ukraine. Рус...

Our home is a living laboratory. Raising adopted children makes one wonder: just how much of a child’s personality is inherited through his or her genes and how much is learned from the surrounding environment? My husband, a high school teacher, works with the tough kids. He loves them, but on more than one occasion, after meeting a parent, I have heard him say, “Well, now I know where that behavior comes from.”

The proverbial “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” is always in the back of my mind as I watch my children grow. As it turns out, my five-year-old adopted daughter is a lot like me—she’s organized, great with words, a natural teacher, and a bit bossy. As I watch these personality traits develop within her, I find myself wondering: “Did she get those traits from her biological mother or father, or is she learning them from me?” Not knowing her biological parents, though, I really can’t know the answer.

English: Nature vs. Nurture

I do recognize, however, that God in his goodness saw to all of this when he knit our family together. He chose our daughter and son for us. Psalm 139:16 tells me God’s “eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in [his] book before one of them came to be” (NIV). He knew me before I was born and he knew my children as well. He saw the map of all of our lives spread out in front of Him before we ever existed. He ordained the circumstances that brought us all together.

From this perspective, perhaps it doesn’t matter whether we are like our mom or dad, or aunt or grandfather, because God is in charge of it all. Whether our families are biological, or grafted together through adoption or remarriage, we are all in a process of becoming. Perhaps the truth is that we are a little of both: God-given nature and God-ordained nurture.

~ Kyleen Stevenson-Braxton

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Perfect Parenting

10 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by finishingwell2 in forgiving mom, God as our parent, mother wounds, stepmom relationship

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Family, Forgiveness, Modeling the faith, Parenting styles

"Death Was Cheated" - newspaper clipping

Ellen was the “miracle” baby “born” after her pregnant mother died suddenly during a stroll in the park

My parenting style is very different from Mom’s and Dad’s. In Journeys to Mother Love I tell of being raised by a stepmother and only finding out when I was grown that she wasn’t my real mom. That was one of the disappointments and deceptions that I finally was able to forgive (with the Lord’s help), so that we could “finish well.”

When I had my own children, I was sure I could do better than my parents had. So I tried my best to give our children a firm foundation mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

In spite of my good intentions, I wasn’t the perfect parent, either. My children now tell me how they felt on the receiving end of my parenting. “You were strict,” they say. “You were really naive.” etc.

With experience comes understanding. When I was young, I couldn’t understand my parents’ viewpoint because I hadn’t walked in their shoes. Now that I’ve been a parent, too, I can look back and empathize with their struggles as they tried to make the best of what life had dealt them. And, it’s easier to forgive their shortcomings, as I hope my children will forgive mine.

My grown son encouraged me by saying he saw us seeking God and modeling Christ to him and his sister, day after day. And it’s because of that example, that he belongs to Christ today. That’s the best outcome we could have hoped for.

We can’t claim any bragging rights for that, though. God, the perfect parent, lit the flame in his heart and our daughter’s, too. Now, as part of His family, God is maturing them as only He knows how. Thank you, Lord.

~ Ellen Cardwell

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