It is wonderful and beautiful when a mother decides to stay home with her kids. And many, many mothers have taken this decision, never to regret it again.
Why?
No one can mother a child except his/her mother and no one can do mothering job better than the mother herself. And we older mothers need to encourage young mothers to stay home and raise their children because if mothers stay home, they can shape the next generation.
But not all mothers who stay home can do that. If a mother attention is taken away from her kids by other stuff, forget it. While she is in the house, TV, video games and other things raise her kids.
Some mothers say, “I am staying home with my kids and take some courses or do my side job in my own house.”
I mean, if the problem she wants to avoid is taking her kids to a daycare, she can successfully find solution to that problem by physically present in the house. However, stay-at-home-mom, her one and only job is to raise her kids so they can be emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually and socially equipped kids. No one can do a stay-at-home-mom job as an add-on task.
For a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, mothering is a call a spiritual mother receives from God. And this call has to be done faithfully as any of God’s calls have to be done.
So, I believe a mother needs to pay attention to the following important
- Count Your Cost
Jesus taught His Disciples saying,
“For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish. Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand?” Luke 14:27-31 NASB
A woman who decides to stay-at-home mom may lose friends, may stay behind her vocation and career. She may not get involved in the church ministries as she used to for the obvious reason. Mothering is a very demanding job.
But this mother has to also remind herself that everything she counts as loss are not really actual losses. They are only deferred for the time being. Once she is done mentoring her children, mainly the first 7-years of her child’s life, she can catch up with all those “losses.”
“God has made everything beautiful for its own time.” Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT
2. Fervent spiritual life
If we say mothering is a spiritual call we receive from God, we cannot do it without God’s help. Reading/studying/meditating the word of God and praying should be part of a mother for her call attracts the attention of the devil. When a person decides to accept the call of God to shape the next generation, all hell breaks loose! And only a fool mother thinks that she can do mothering by herself.
3. Setting Priorities Right
The health of mothering is directly related to the health of a mother’s marriage. That means, a stay-at-home mom’s number one priority is her husband, not the kids. Yes, she takes a good care of her kids but she does not neglect her husband.
4. Constant Learning and Growing
In my opinion, there is nothing like a stay-at-home mom job that helps a mother to put to death the sin of pride and selfish. As she gives herself for mentoring and shaping the next generation, she puts her kids’ before her.
The word of God says,
“But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.” 1 Timothy 2:15 NIV
And a spiritual stay-at-home mom always learns from other spiritual mothers, from their books and teachings so she can do the best job of raising up the next generation. Through it all, she too grows, maturing spiritually, mentally and spiritually.
But all these things cannot be done unless a mother gives herself unreservedly to the call of mothering. ///