The Secret To Being A Good Mother?

http://suzysvintageattic.blogspot.com.au

Almost every mother wants to do a great job.  It would be great if there was a manual or training course that covered it all!   Mothers read parenting books, attend parenting workshops, and try their best every day - and regularly feel as though they are failing!   We might even feel like we are doing a terrible job some days.  (Even some weeks, and sometimes some years! :)

What makes a great mother?  Having everything home-cooked?  Staying slim and gorgeous?  Keeping the home immaculate?  Having the home messy and relaxed?  Lots of laughter?  Lots of teaching?  Slaphappy?  Always busy? Talkative?  Reserved?  Not too strict?  Not too lenient?   ...

The truth is that we are all so very different.  A great Mum could be any or none of the above.  There is only one quality that perhaps all great mothers share, and it's this:  They care.  They love you more than they love themselves.  They care enough and love you enough to do their best every day and to never give up on you or on themselves.  

A good mother may even make lots of mistakes - but not because she doesn't care or isn't trying hard enough, but just because she gets it wrong sometimes.  She will apologize to her children for the mistakes she makes, and might explain to them that she'll probably make more mistakes - as hard as she's trying not to.  

And that will be probably be ok, because her children will be able to see and feel and believe that she loves, and cares, and believes in them, and always will.   A good mother isn't necessarily perfect, but her love almost is.

I find that enormously comforting!   The thought that a good mother is simply one who truly cares.

By Sandy Munro

The Way to Sure Success

We are commanded to be perfect.  Sometimes that seems to be a goal beyond our reach, and we can become discouraged.  I'd like to pass on a thought I've had about our need to be patient with ourselves...

http://www.practicingparents.com

Babies, children, toddlers are wonderful!  They try, and try, and fall or fail, and try again, until they 'get it'.  We know that eventually, they will walk, talk, toilet themselves, say 'Mummy, I love you'; even learn to ride a bike, swim across the pool, and read by themselves.  Eventually, their toes will touch the floor while they are sitting on the pew in church; their fingers will eventually reach the doorknob, the top of the doorway, (and sometimes, in the case of teenage boys straining to be picked for the basketball team), the ceiling.  These things will all, in the normal course of life, always be achieved.   

Babies don't ever ponder the possibility of failure.  It just never seems to occur to them.  So they keep trying, until they do advance; achieve; succeed.  And we take their eventual success just as much for granted - we know that their destiny is to be successful in these things.  

Little Ballerina's Dream painting by Roberta Martin

To look at a newborn baby or a small child, it could seem incredible that they will be able to accomplish so many intricate, fabulous things one day.  Except that we know what is possible, and probable, because we have already managed it ourselves.  How sad it would be for us to ever see a baby just give up on trying - to walk, or talk, or feed themselves, knowing as we do know, the progress that would have occurred if they had just continued their efforts.   

I wonder if this is the way that Heavenly Father looks upon us in our struggle to become like Him.  He sees us fall over, again and again, and I think that His response probably somewhat mirrors our response to our own children: a warm and vitally interested desire to encourage and support, and a feeling of overwhelming love for the child: walking or not; successful or..  not just yet.  Perhaps He loves us in the same way that we love our babies, even when they can't do anything much yet!  Perhaps He smiles understandingly, as we occasionally do, when the baby who is learning to sit up, puddles over onto their side, or sometimes falls flat on their face, or even occasionally throws a tantrum.  Maybe it really doesn't bother Him that much that it takes us a while to learn what we need to learn - since He knows that eventually, with His help, we will, inevitably, succeed. As long as we don't give up.

Pinterest

I remember with love and humour the picture of our oldest daughter, Tammy, attempting to learn a piano piece for her Beginner's exam.  I think she was about seven.  She sat at our piano each day, plonking out a few simple notes, trying over and over again to play the childish tune, before one day throwing her hands to her eyes and crying, with real anguish, "I can't do it, I just can't do it!  I'll NEVER be able to learn this - it's too hard!"   

Fast forward to her seventeenth year, to the exceptionally lengthy and difficult music pieces I heard her practise then, in preparation for her Diploma of Music exam.  How beautiful it was to hear her filling our home with such intricate and lovely melodies.

How wonderful to know that our own stumbling, occasionally faltering, and even sometimes emotionally hysterical attempts now to sound a tune, are one day, most certainly, if we 'continue in patience', destined to become performances of great beauty too.



By Sandy Munro

The Story of the Glazed Brick and the Ants

(This story has been retold many times - by Jeffrey R. Holland in 1974 Speeches of the Year, by Marion D. Hanks in his book, ' The Gift of Self', and by others.  Its purport is to inspire us to keep learning.)

'Keep learning. Where to discover your interest and how to amass relevant information are illustrated in the story of an obscure spinster woman who insisted that she never had a chance. She muttered these words to Dr. Louis Agassiz, distinguished naturalist, after one of his lectures in London. In response to her complaint, he replied: “Do you say, madam, you never had a chance? What do you do?”

“I am single and help my sister run a boardinghouse.”

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I skin potatoes and chop onions.”

He said, “Madam, where do you sit during these interesting but homely duties?”

“On the bottom step of the kitchen stairs.”

“Where do your feet rest?”

“On the glazed brick.”

“What is glazed brick?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

He said, “How long have you been sitting there?”

She said, “Fifteen years.”

“Madam, here is my personal card,” said Dr. Agassiz. “Would you kindly write me a letter concerning the nature of a glazed brick?”

'She took him seriously. She went home and explored the dictionary and discovered that a brick was a piece of baked clay. That definition seemed too simple to send to Dr. Agassiz, so after the dishes were washed, she went to the library and in an encyclopedia read that a glazed brick is vitrified kaolin and hydrous aluminium silicate. She didn’t know what that meant, but she was curious and found out. She took the word vitrified and read all she could find about it. Then she visited museums. She moved out of the basement of her life and into a new world on the wings of vitrified.And having started, she took the word hydrous, studied geology, and went back in her studies to the time when God started the world and laid the clay beds. One afternoon she went to a brickyard, where she found the history of more than 120 kinds of bricks and tiles, and why there have to be so many. Then she sat down and wrote thirty-six pages on the subject of glazed brick and tile.

'Back came the letter from Dr. Agassiz: “Dear Madam, this is the best article I have ever seen on the subject. If you will kindly change the three words marked with asterisks, I will have it published and pay you for it.”

'A short time later there came a letter that brought $250, and penciled on the bottom of this letter was this query: “What was under those bricks?” She had learned the value of time and answered with a single word: “Ants.” He wrote back and said, “Tell me about the ants.”

'She began to study ants. She found there were between eighteen hundred and twenty-five hundred different kinds. There are ants so tiny you could put three head-to-head on a pin and have standing room left over for other ants; ants an inch long that march in solid armies half a mile wide, driving everything ahead of them; ants that are blind; ants that get wings on the afternoon of the day they die; ants that build anthills so tiny that you can cover one with a lady’s silver thimble; peasant ants that keep cows to milk, and then deliver the fresh milk to the apartment house of the aristocrat ants of the neighbourhood.

'After wide reading, much microscopic work, and deep study, the spinster sat down and wrote Dr. Agassiz 360 pages on the subject. He published the book and sent her the money, and she went to visit all the lands of her dreams on the proceeds of her work.

'Now, as you hear this story, do you feel acutely that all of us are sitting with our feet on pieces of

vitrified kaolin and hydrous aluminium silicate—with ants under them? Lord Chesterton answers: 

“There are no uninteresting things; 

there are only uninterested people.”

Keep learning!'


By Sandy Munro

Teaching Children to Serve

A recent Ensign shared this story, which beautifully illustrates that youth is no barrier to giving service.  Below the article are some ideas for teaching children to give service.

She Needs Love
By Jay Mcfarland, Utah, USA

I was not a very impressive teenager and spent little time serving others. During this time my mother invited me to come with her to visit my great-aunt at a nursing home.

My cousin and her daughter Stephanie accompanied us on this visit. Stephanie was seven or eight years old. As we walked into the nursing home, she waved at everyone she saw. They lit up as if she were handing out sunshine and rainbows. I, on the other hand, avoided eye contact.

When we entered the room that my great-aunt shared with another elderly woman, I did my best to disappear into the background. Stephanie, however, jumped onto my aunt’s bed and began to regale her with stories.

I noticed something about this room. On my aunt’s side were signs of love and family. Pictures and crayon drawings hung on the wall, and flowers adorned a night-stand. The other side of the room was sterile and bare. There were no signs of any visitors; no cards or pictures hung on the wall.

My aunt’s room-mate sat alone in a wheelchair and did not acknowledge our presence. She was humming a tune and tapping the arms of her wheelchair, which made me uncomfortable.

Stephanie tugged on her mother’s arm and asked, “Mommy, what’s the matter with that lady?” Stephanie’s mother leaned down and whispered, “She needs love.” I was not prepared for what happened next.

Without hesitation, Stephanie ran over and jumped into the woman’s lap. She then began to tell her stories and ask all kinds of questions. The woman did not answer. Instead, tears ran down her face as she embraced Stephanie. For the next several minutes, Stephanie sat in her lap, stroking her hair and kissing her cheek.

I had never witnessed this type of unselfish love before, and I tried to hide my tears. Later, as we drove away from the nursing home, I marveled at how young Stephanie could be so selfless and so full of love and compassion for a complete stranger.

Eventually I turned my life around and served a full-time mission. While I served, Stephanie wrote me cute letters that included drawings just like the ones in my aunt’s room in the nursing home.

Before I returned home, I received the devastating news that an illness had claimed Stephanie’s life. I still weep that her light went out so soon, but I remain grateful for her example. She taught me what service truly is.

We do not ever have to wonder how or if we should serve. If our hearts are in the right place, then service will become a part of who we are, not just what we do.

__________

There are a lot of good ideas out there on the net to help us to help our children, 

(and ourselves), to give service.  One of those sites is 'Pennies of Time', and some 

posts that you may enjoy are linked below.  - Click on the page to go to that post.

(By Sandy Munro)