honor motherhood – Page 3

smaller making mothers day merry badge Yesterday, I asked:

Do you find it difficult to honor motherhood? I know I do! If so, why do you think that is? Is it the nature of the work? Pressures from others? Pressures and expectations from yourself?

For me, it’s a combination of the three, of course, but mostly expectations I have for myself, followed by the repetitive and even “drudgerous” nature of the “work” of motherhood.

But even as I pondered that, I realized that my underlying assumption here is misleading. Yes, motherhood is work. It’s hard work, even. But motherhood itself, motherhood as an institution, has very little to do with the maintenance- and housework that we commonly associate it.

As I’ve said before, motherhood isn’t about housework. It’s not about cleaning or cooking or organizing, though all those things are part-and-parcel of the tasks that come with having children. But “Motherhood is not, at its heart, about doing. Motherhood is about being. Because motherhood isn’t just something you do; it’s who you are.”

Granted, these tasks are important—and time consuming. But perhaps if we separate the day-to-day chores that accompany (or are simply magnified by) the arrival children, we’ll be able to slowly begin to see motherhood in a positive light.

What do you think? Can we mentally separate the maintenance of our children (and our own) from the meaning of motherhood?

HONORing motherhood

smaller making mothers day merry badge I find it interesting that in the King James Version of the Bible, nine of the ten commandments are negative commandments: don’t do this, don’t do that. Even “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy” goes on to say “thou shalt not do any work. . . .” To break these commandments, you have to actively do something: kill, cheat, worship a graven image, etc.

There one exception, one commandment that could be broken by simply a sin of omission: “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land with the Lord thy God shall give thee.”

Traditionally, we understand this commandment to mean “obey your parents,” but that isn’t what it says. It says to honour. (Perhaps your wedding vows contained the promise to “love, honor and obey,” three different concepts.) This particular word choice can add a lot to our understanding of not only this commandment but also the kind of value that we should place on motherhood. (I’d love to hear any insights gained on this from the original Hebrew, too, if anyone has any!)

What does it mean to honor motherhood? We can pretty easily define motherhood, and we’ve even done so in one of our most popular group writing projects.

So what does it mean to ‘honor’ motherhood? In my scriptures, a helpful footnote gives a few synonyms for ‘honour’: “respect or value.” This goes far deeper than just obeying your parents’ rules until you get out of the house, and expecting the same from your children.

Truly honoring motherhood means to place value upon the efforts that we make as mothers every day, and not just because these efforts give us food to eat, clean clothes to wear and a clean house. Honoring motherhood means recognizing that raising our children is important, and quite probably the most important thing we’ll ever do. It’s a task that’s worth doing, worth doing well, and incredibly challenging.

Do you find it difficult to honor motherhood? I know I do! If so, why do you think that is? Is it the nature of the work? Pressures from others? Pressures and expectations from yourself?