Reflection Journal
A Mother's Story
Ellen Victor

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Life is like a story book, it consists of a beginning, the main story, and an ending. We all begin our lives in the same way and yet the stories of lives are all different. At the end, when all of us are standing in front of the throne of God’s Most High, it is the story of our lives that we have to account for. This is a story of one’s struggle to comprehend a big portion of her life story, parenthood.

The parenting style when I grew up in the eighties is like this, most fathers are busy working, mothers are expected to stay at home and take care of the children. A father’s role is providing for the family, children are the mother’s responsibility. A father expects hot meals every evening and well behaved children. Fathers are a figure that the children only see probably a couple of times in a week.

A decade from there, mothers are starting to enter the work force, the care for the children are given to the grandparents or other family members or nannies. Children spend most their times at school and afterwards in extracurricular activities or extra lessons. They only spend time with their parents during the weekends.

Another decade has passed, and now almost every child has his/her own nanny to take care of all his/her needs. Besides the nanny, almost every house has housemaids to take care of the cooking, washing, etc. Grandparents that can be depended on during the previous decade are now still busy working, so the care of children is given to those professional nannies. Mothers and fathers are busy working, because the demands of work are constantly increasing. Schools are more advanced in their activities, children stay even longer at school, and some even feel that school is homier than their own home. Living costs are high, so parents need to work harder to give the best for their children.

And now it is my turn, when I first held that wriggling baby in my arms, I gave thanks to the Creator who made him perfect until the last toe. Knowing in my heart, starting from that moment, another chapter of my life has just begun, I am now a mother. I and my husband have tried to prepare ourselves as much as we can, we read books and we also consult some people to decide on what kind o parenting style we are going to adopt. Having done all that, we thought it should be enough but it is not smooth sailing.

The first couple of weeks are a blur; feeding, burping, changing diapers, and the cycle repeat itself again. With only a couple hours of sleep each night, my mind, my body is working at a survival mode; I can barely hold a coherent thought in my mind, the thought of giving up was there, but we keep our persistence.

After a while the rhythm of this new schedule settled down, allowing me to sit down and think. Many books have been written on the subject of taking care of babies, and I have read some of them, but is that it? Is being a mother equals to just taking care of the baby’s basic needs? Somehow deep in my heart I know it is more than that, much more than that.

Just like any other subject in this world, parenting had also being misunderstood and misinterpret from its Original intent. Many people set children as the sole focus of their life, letting the children to direct their life, or to the other extreme they see children as an object that is so weak and so incapable of doing anything thus all the decision should be made by the parents (and this might go on until the child is in his twenties or even thirties). But what is the True North in this issue? What kind of mindset should I have?

These are some quotes that really help me in putting things into perspective.

“If you are a mother, you have a calling from God. God entrusts into your care a life, a future, a piece of what the world will become. You become part of the solution or part of the problem that faces us today . . . . Mothers are neither the cause of all society’s ills nor the saviors of the nation. But the future of society does depend, in part, on what we do with the children under our care.” [1]

Before this I tend to see being a mother as a duty, part of the cycle of life that every mom has to go through. I have never realized the intensity of it. When I start seeing it as a calling from God, I start realizing that the implications of my parenting is greatly connected to how the future of my child will become and to the bigger extent, the future of the society we are living in, to the future of Indonesia, and even to the whole world. On one hand it is scary, but on the other hand it is exciting. It is scary because if I did something wrong, the effect will be long term. And it is exciting because I am making a history. By sowing seeds of truth in my child’s life, I am leaving him the spiritual heritage for him to carry on to the next generation.

The other thing that I learned that children are from God, they are His. I should not try to be God over my children. Unless God is working, all my efforts will go wasted, I might have done a stupendous work for my children but unless God is working, all will be in vain. But it does not mean that I will just sit by and let God do all the works. God wants us to participate in His works. Both I and my child are going to be shaped by God through the process. God will play His part, and I should play my part.

It is hard to imagine but the small things that I am doing in my child’s life today is going to shape him forever. God calls me to a humangous task, putting in my hands a piece of what the future will become. Even though my child has a big part in my life’s story, he is his own person and he has his own story to tell.

Will Hitler’s life story be different if he was brought up another way? Will Iraq be a different country if Sadam Hussein is raised differently? Both of them are children once, do you ever wonder “what ifs”? Will the world we are living in now be a different world? Abraham Lincoln once said” I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.” That’s how powerful a mother’s role is.

I pray for moms in this generation to come into realization of the importance of their roles in their children’s lives. I pray for moms out there to commit fully in answering God’s calling to be mothers. I believe strongly that family is the foundation of society. And as mothers we have a critical role to play. I call for moms out there to be there for your children when they need you, to infuse those True teachings in your children lives, to walk out those teachings in your daily activities and to be more on your knees praying for them.

I have been in this task for only 8 months and I am constantly struggling. I still have so many things to learn, and will make many more mistakes. There are others that are ahead of me and there will be others that will come behind me. My hope is that we can come together to share, to support each other in this huge task. And with God’s help, I hope we can all make a difference in our children’s lives.

Note: By only focusing on mothers, the writer does not infer that mothers are more significant in parenting, the role of fathers are equally important in this issue.

Ellen Victor and her husband are Indonesians, they are both States grads and now they are running their own business in Indonesia. God blesses them with an eight months old baby boy and puts them in charge in caring for this baby.

[1] Fleming, Jean, “A Mother’s Heart”, NavPress 1996.

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