PARENTING March 8, 2010 Issue

GRACEFUL MOMMY

BY SUSAN TISH

HAVING LEFT A CAREER in international business to be a stay-at-home mom when my second child came along, I was used to having sales targets and goals by which to measure my progress. And in my new role as a full-time household manager and mother, performance reviews and charts were not part of the deal!

But during this time, a particular quotation served as a sort of mission statement. It was from Science and Health, written by Mary Baker Eddy, who was a mother, among other distinctions: "What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds" (p. 4). For me, these words perfectly described the qualities that a mother most needs.

Those first few years as an at-home mom were not easy. I often felt as if I fell far short of the patience, grace, and loving-kindness full-time motherhood required. Perhaps practice does indeed make perfect, though, because with the birth of my third child, things changed as the gift of grace finally came into full bloom.