An excerpt from The Making of a Mom…
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach”
These words may have dripped from the pen of Elizabeth Browning’s love sick heart, but counting the ways a mother loves her children is as endless as Elizabeth’s love for her man.
Yet how do we love our children? What does that look like when it’s more than words on a page? We say we love our children, but do we understand what it actually means.
Love is so much more than a four letter word and a two word definition. It’s not what we feel – it’s not what we say – it’s what we do.
I remember reading Titus 2:3-4 one day and noticed it said for the older women to teach the younger women to “love” their husbands and their children. I didn’t get it. Why would I have to be taught to love my husband or my children? I already did. But as I grew in my journey as a wife and a mother, I discovered that I had a whole lot to learn about what love really was and about how to love them well.
Simply stated, love is doing what is best for the one who is loved. But what does that look like in real life? How can we love them well?
1. Love them through the lens of 1 Corinthians 13
Since the Bible teaches us God is love is only logical that we should derive our understanding of love from the One who defines it by His very existence. In 1 Corinthians 13, we find what is commonly called, The Love Chapter because it tells us what love is.
Let 1 Corinthians 13 become your love filter and put your love to the test. Does the way you treat your children – the way you act and react to them – the way you behave around them – the way you conduct yourselves in your home, in your community, with your friends and with their friends, pass the biblical love test?
Are you being patient? Kind? Not envious? Not boastful? Not arrogant? Not rude? Not stubborn? Not irritable? Not resentful? Are you rejoicing over what is wrong or what is truth? Are you bearing all things? Believing all things? Hoping all things? Enduring all things? Are you loving them no matter what?
2. Love them even when it’s inconvenient
It’s not always easy to be a mom. Tucked not-so-neatly between the sweet cuddly moments of sheer awe are the days and nights of frequent and inconvenient interruptions.
Whether you’re queen of the scheduled life or you function better on the fly, your life as a mother is on high alert for incoming interruptions. It’s just part of being a mom.
Children cry in the middle of the night. They get sick, hurt and hungry. They have doctor’s appointments, field trips, baseball practice and dance lessons.
In the real world, it’s going to happen. Life often shows up at the most inconvenient times. But the question is, how are you going to deal with it? How will love be your response when you’re busy and burdened, frustrated and frazzled?
3. Love them in their own language
“De tal manera amó Dios al mundo, que ha dado a su Hijo unigénito, para que todo aquel que en él cree no se pierda, sino que tenga vida eterna.”
Unless you speak Spanish, you have little or no idea what the above quote says. It is John 3:16 – the greatest statement of love in the history of mankind – yet you don’t understand what it says because it’s not written in your own language.
Love is like that. Unless we show love to the ones we love in their “love language” they don’t really feel it…at least not to the extent we are trying to show it.
In 1997, Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell wrote a book that revolutionized the way we love our children. It’s entitled, The Five Love Languages of Children. It’s definitely a ‘must read’ for every mother. The book presents five love languages in which our children give and receive love:
Physical Touch
Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Gift Giving
Acts of Service
It’s been said, “There ain’t no love like a mother’s love”, but if Momma isn’t loving her children in a way they understand then they ain’t feeling the love. So, be sure to love them in their language.
4. Remember love isn’t lazy
We all need rest, but loving them well means doing what is best for them even when we’re dead-dog tired and at the end of our proverbial rope. Even discipline requires love that isn’t lazy. No means no – no matter how exhausted we may be.
Love is definitely not lazy. But it’s not easy to always be on your game – to be diligent when you’d rather just crawl into bed, pull the covers over your head and call it a day.
Love doesn’t do that. Love considers the needs of others more important than its own.
5. Love them with your lifestyle
One of the ways we show our children we love them is to live out a healthy lifestyle for and before them. Part of loving them well is teaching them how to take care of themselves, eat right, be active and exercise regularly – and our example speaks much louder than our words. It’s not easy, but it’s part of how we love them with our lives.
None of us can be Supermom. When our children come into the world, we aren’t given a golden lasso along with their birth certificates. And loving our children well isn’t easy – but if momma doesn’t love them well, who will?
Has this article expanded your view of love? Helped you in anyway? Given you some ideas of how to love your children well? Share some thoughts on loving your children well?
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