Book Club Thursday | Mama Made the Difference

Mamas Teach Us to Endure

If we do not endure, we do not succeed.  As a little girl, I remember being taught endurance through puzzles.  My mother would buy us puzzles to work through and put together. With each puzzle that we successfully put together, the next puzzle we were given was just a little bit harder. These puzzles taught us the lesson of patience and endurance, and that was my mother's purpose in having us put puzzles together- to learn endurance.

The mothers of America- and likewise, mothers all over the world- have indeed persevered through heartache and heartbreak, through fears and tears, through lean times and lack.  They have done it because there is something in their hearts that refuses to give up, no matter how fierce the challenge. If there is one thing a mother is not, it's a quitter.  I know of so many women who had to endure a variety of different situations- difficult marriages, divorce, life as a single mother, working a job or two while raising their child(ren) alone, and sometimes these women were also juggling health issues as well.  However, many of these women endured their circumstances for the sake of their children and came out on the other side with a marriage that was saved, the gift of a beautiful new marriage, and children who are serving the Lord.  There were many difficult times for these women, but they never quit.  They endured, and now have beautiful testimonies to share with others.  I am honored to know some of these women as friends and family members.

...A woman's children are her hope and her future.  Through them she will accomplish things she could not do herself. My mother was always doing things in order to give us a brighter future.  I now fully understand her phrase, "I only want the best for you," as those are my feelings for Addie and Squishy.  I want Addie to grow up to have all that God has to offer her and I want to do everything in my ability to make that possible for her. 

Through them, her life goes on when her heart has stopped beating.  I was recently told after a conversation with one of Mom's cousins, "Your mother lives on."  I was so honored.  If only my mother knew how much her lessons to me really sank in and are now being multiplied in ways she never imagined. Her legacy has continued although her earthly life ended.    

I learned that endurance is not about being happy; endurance is about being faithful and it is about sacrifice.  In our world, we are told to do what makes us happy.  Very few times are we told to endure until the end.  So where are our children going to learn to endure?  From us as mothers.  We are the ones who will teach by example the lesson of enduring and being faithful and sacrificing in order to endure.  Those are lessons that God has reserved for mothers (and fathers) to teach their children.... because heaven only knows they will not learn those lessons outside of the home.

If you do not learn to endure, you will only know how to give up.  We already live in a world where our first inclination is to give up when things get to be too hard.  I, for one, do not want my children to be quitters, but they will only learn to push forward through the example they see in their father and me.  As adults, if you have only been a quitter in the past, it is never to late for you to learn to endure.  Just imagine the profound impact you will have on your children if they see you work through an issue rather than quit in the middle. 

I learned to endure through my mother's example, and I pray that Addie learns that same lesson by watching me.