05/13/2024
Motherhood is a Crown
What is in your crown? I believe our experiences form the tapestry with which our crowns continue to be made. When I set out to be a mother, I just wanted an opportunity to share my love and care with another human being that I would have the fortune of bringing up. Desire set me on this path, but love kept me going.
I am many things that I could not have imagined being had I not become a mother. The responsibilities of motherhood taught me to be imaginative, enterprising, and bold for my children.
Now that my children are grown up and living lives of their own, and I am single again, it is as if I have a second chance at life. I realize there is a child in me that I must help grow up with understanding after years of experience. I am reimagining life on my terms, not as a parent, daughter, or wife. As women, those are the roles we live with forever, they dictate our behaviors and wellbeing. The question I constantly ask myself, if I had my life to redo all over again, how would I do it?
The first biggest answer is, I would live life on my own terms and not live with inhibitions wondering and fearing what others would say about my behavior, choices, etc., I have done that all my life and tended to please everyone else except myself. Can you imagine living all your life, never knowing what it would have been like if you had to decide who you wanted to be or do?
My first instinct has been to embrace what I am capable of doing. I still have strength and I am able bodied. I have learned that disuse leads to atrophy. If you don't use it, you will eventually lose it. To mitigate my losses, I must salvage the gifts that God gave me and make use of them. To make use of them, I must take care of them the way God intended for them to be.
Many of you are familiar with the parable of the talents. We equate those talents to the gifts we have in our lives, but we never stop to ask what kinds of gifts these are. Some of you narrowly state them as the gifts of teaching, prophecy, apostleship, etc. We all know that those are not the only gifts God has given us. If you go back to the Old Testament and look at the instructions God gave about building the tabernacle, he sent out word to mobilize people who were excellent in arts, all kinds of arts that were put together to create the most excellent structures that could be placed in the holy of holies and the entire structure that constituted this great masterpiece. God is not only interested in our gifts, but he also seeks out excellence. Excellence is a diligent practice of giving our very best at all times in all circumstances.
As a mother, who is free to live her life on her terms, I realize that my gifts, whatever they may be and they are many, if I am going to live them out, I must give them my all. I must be stupendous. Whatever I do therefore, I go BIG or I go home. If I am going to teach, I will do my best. If I speak it will be the same. If I am going to dance, expect the razzle and dazzle, all on my terms, no one else's.
Those are all details in the tapestry that form the crown of my own motherhood. How is yours? It doesn't have to be like mine, nor does mine have to be like yours, remember, we are all traveling on different trajectories with different assignments.
Enjoy your life as a mother and as YOU, there will only be one YOU. I am.
