Life is not about taking the perfect walk down the perfect path, but about meeting the challenges with Faith and Fervor

There will be days when you are proud of your mothering. Then there are days when you seem to fail so miserably and act so foolishly that you just want to run somewhere and hide. It’s at times like these that you need to remember . . . it’s all good! Why? Because God is all good!

The world hands us these crazy images of the perfect mother personified. A cruel trick, because there is no such thing anywhere. The very best we can do is to open ourselves to instruction and Wisdom and be humble enough to recognize ourselves for who we are—spirits in a human vessel occupying a MotherSpace, trying our best to take our children by the hand and guide them purposefully through the childhood space and on to their adult space of Self.

This is what you have to start knowing: The spirit inside you is good. The spirit inside you is wise enough to give your children sound advice. Your spirit is patient, loving, understanding, and compassionate. X out the picture of the perfect Mom you have in your mind, and picture instead yourself disfigured, unique and lopsided, housing the Spirit of God, willing and enthusiastic . . . and made divinely able once again today.

Love & Light

I am all right, in spite of it all.

We have, many of us, been too hard on ourselves. Our stellar attempts at raising our children have been noble. Look at us, mothering children, trying to instill lessons we’re not sure we’ve mastered, giving so much love when we’re so needy ourselves.

We need to speak tender tones of soothing to ourselves. Some of us have been through hard, harsh times. Some of us have undergone unuttered pains and shames.

We need to acknowledge to ourselves that we surely did the best with what we had and who we were at that time. Our hearts need to know that we are self-loved, if not self-understood. This is why we are sometimes heart-sick. We have abandoned ourselves on some derelict shore of some island of self-rejection and gone on to try to be somewhere else, someone else.

Many of us are strangers to our real selves. We’ve never gone very far on the road of self-exploration and self-knowledge because we’ve spooked ourselves early on. A few steps into the deep of Self, we meet a ghost—perhaps it is a ghost of old pain, or a ghost of guilt or a particular shame, or a fear we are ashamed of. We back out of ourselves the way a child runs back out the entrance of an amusement-park scary house, and we try to forget what we saw in there, who we saw. And all the while we are ashamed of ourselves for being who we were and angry with ourselves for not being able to save ourselves from whatever.

We must come to a place of mothering ourselves.

Using the sweetest terms we can think of, we must—out loud—profess our unconditional love for the child of God that we are. And we must forgive Self. Tell ourselves that we are all right. Worthy. O.K. Just as we are. In spite of the mis-takes and mis-steps, our confusion, fears, self-doubts, self-effacement, worry, and dis-loyalty to Self.

Love & Light

With each breath I take, I forgive. I feel lighter, and filled with Light.

Forgive. Reach deep into the well of your emotions. Reach into the sediment where the old angers and resentments and fears and disappointments and illusions have settled. No matter how clear you strive to keep the waters, the sediment colors, flavors, scents your offerings to others. Reach deep into the well and stir the sediment. The ugly colors, ugly flavors and scents will rise up first. Don’t be ashamed or afraid. Smell them. Feel them in the pit of your stomach. Taste them. Swish them around in your mouth. See how sad and pitiful they taste. Let the ugly sediment turn to tears.

Now take forgiving breaths. Breathe in deep. Blow out hard. Breathe in deep. Blow out hard. Breathe in deep. Blow out hard. Do this as many times as you have to. This is your woman-work and your mother-work. With each breath you take into your body, praise God and forgive. With each exhale, rejoice. Inhale forgiveness. Blow out that which no longer agrees with your spirit.

Love & Light

Mothering is Divine Work and Divine Work requires Divine Connections

Sometimes this mission of mothering looks too painful, too arduous, too impossible. Your task may be to wrestle the principles with your child. Your task may be to soften his heart, or teach her focus or discipline, to build him up or open her eyes. Chances are you will have to do all of the above.

You may have learned to do more of some things and less of others. The conditions in your life may not be as you would have them be. You may feel too young or too old . . . or just not up to this. Your checkbook may say you’re too poor. But apparently, right in the face of all of the adverse conditions and opinions, God has appointed you to the precious and favored position of “Mother, Mama, Mom, Ma, Momma, Mommy.” God apparently wants your child to walk through these experiences with you. God has appointed you.

God’s Wisdom is infinite. It goes way back and it goes way forward. God gave you the mother you have so that you would come to mother the child you have in a certain way. God will supply what you need and prepare you to do all that you will have to do—if you ask. God will teach you the ropes. Send you helpers. And counselors. Strength. Peace. And Courage.

Believe that this mothering task is the work God chose you to do.

Love & Light

When I remember who I am, I will know what to do

How will you teach your daughter to stand strong in her own skin if you are easily intimidated in yours? And how will you show your son the strong beauty of a woman if you have forsaken yours? Do you think so little of yourself? Haven’t you remembered, yet, who you are? You were created as the solution to a condition! When you forget your purpose, you forfeit the motivation that moves you along in the right direction. When you forget your purpose, you can no longer depend on yourself to guide those who are trying to use your Light to see their way to their main path.

My Sister, if you would only remember! If you would only know yourself! Think of yourself at birth, a precious Light prepared and then embodied for the purpose of doing all of this . . . not just to survive, not just to conquer, but to initiate and create important things.

Grace, God has given to you, because God knows you don’t remember or you wouldn’t think as you do.

And Peace.

Because you have forgotten about the space of Peace God placed in you from your beginning. You had all the Faith. Now where did you leave it?

God knows your frame is dust. Do you know that inside that frame is the breath of the Spirit of ‘I am’?

Love & Light,
Esther

The spirits of the old and stronger ones present themselves in the midst of my can't s to tell me I can.

We have in our mothers and grandmothers . . . those who were survivors . . . powerful examples of how to make it.

They believed in God. They believed in working. They took pride in creating their own home spaces.

One day we look up and realize we’re walking a powerless walk. We still have our power, but it’s unexercised and weak.

We have to re-discover ourselves. Remember? We are the descendants of mighty women who drew the power to create, to work, to dream, to facilitate, to nurture, build, sow, reap, and tear down strongholds as naturally as they drew breath from their God.

I hear them praying. Don’t you?

Don’t you hear them praying and praising and singing and shouting? Don’t you see them dancing their old feet to Faith rhythms . . . stepping everywhere?

There was power in their gratitude. . . power in their praising . . . power in their hope and in their Faith. . . power in their loving . . . power in their trusting in their God-Creator . . . power in their knowing for certain what they believed.

And so it is for us. You and me. And so it is. Hallelujah!

(Re-Inventing Your MotherSpace: Creating A Good and Blessed Future For Our Children, Copyright 2008, Esther Davis-Thompson)

Love & Light

I will remember the Love and Work of the Ancestors and not make light of their tears.

Our people are still recovering. The footprint of the historical burdens borne can still be felt on our shoulders . . . still casts shadows in our minds. We should not forget the heavy work our ancestors have already done. We should not be remiss about the healing work we still need to do.

The experiences are in our blood for a reason. We often have relapses and forget who we are and where we’ve been. We get sloppy and forget how hard our ancestors had to fight for their children to get an education . . . and we forget to check homework. We get caught up in form and fashion and forget how base-level and functional our love for God and our need for God was then—and now. We forget that, once, being the blood mother of a child didn’t guarantee that you would have the privilege of raising that child.

(Re-InventingYour MotherSpace: Creating A Good and Blessed Future For Our Children, Copyright 2008, Esther Davis-Thompson)

Love & Light