Embracing Motherhood

Introduction

This book is not about the perfect Catholic family—so you don’t have to put it down if you feel yours is imperfect! There are many kinds of families today: traditional two-parent families; single-parent, blended, and foster families; grandparents raising their grandchildren. This is not a book of fluff either. You’ll be reading about the realities of a mother’s life with all its delights and heart-wrenching circumstances. You’ll find, I hope, encouragement, affirmation, and solidarity with someone who has been in the trenches too.

It’s not just because I am a mother that I believe the vocation of motherhood is so extraordinary. In fact, I even believe it’s a sacred calling like none other. A mother can simply go through the motions in her vocation of motherhood as she strives to keep up with all it entails while trudging through her days, possibly even oblivious to her divine calling. Or, she can fully embrace her vocation, both the joys as well as the sufferings—every bit of it. How many mothers actually embrace their vocation? I wonder. How many revel in it all and recognize their role as an actual vocation?

Before the Internet and access to countless blogs, a mother used to swap parenting stories while hanging out the laundry as her neighbor leaned in to chat over her back fence. On a big old front porch on a summer afternoon, women used to gab away about family life while their hands crafted family heirlooms and their children played nearby.

Times have changed, haven’t they? We seem to run from one event to the next, totally immersed in the task at hand, with little or no thought about our divine purpose. Added to the mix is an unfortunate lack of time to create our own family memories. There’s a lot to be said about the ways in which our ancestors mothered. It may appear that I am suggesting we turn back the clocks to an earlier, slower-paced era. No, we live in this present moment in time, and that is where we do our mothering. But I do think we can adopt some practices and wisdom from earlier days.

Where do we learn how to mother anyway? Mothering 101? Obviously, some of our expertise comes to us from our ancestors—our grandmothers, mothers, and maybe our aunts too. We decide what traditions and strategies in mothering we want to carry on and the ones we’d rather leave out. We pick up batches of wisdom and advice along the way from observing other mothers. We gain insight from reading articles or books about Catholic mothering (like the one you have in your hands!). We incorporate what makes sense to us, which practices inspire us, and apply them to our own lives.

And, I hope, we also take some time to pause, ponder, and pray—even if it’s only briefly here and there, between tasks or while doing them, so we can hear our Lord’s call to us in our mothering. We don’t want to allow the current ungodly culture to dictate to us how we should mother our children. That’s easy to do as we are bustling around, feeling out of time, and being exposed just about everywhere we look to the nonsense in the media today.

Since most mothers’ lives are typically filled to the brim with the care of their household and family as well as with work outside the home, they may seldom have the opportunity to reflect on their lives as mothers and how they are to serve God through their vocation of love. Yet, no matter how much time or inclination a woman has to learn more about becoming a better mother or how to better deal with everything that motherhood entails, the fact remains that, since the beginning of time, motherhood is a vocation filled with the deepest blessings and joys, interwoven with sorrows and challenges. It is a vocation in which a mother is intimately meshed with the human beings who have been entrusted to her care.

I find it pretty incredible to realize that you, Eve, and I have all experienced the miraculous vocation of motherhood. In different ways, of course, yet nonetheless motherhood goes back to the dawn of creation. And as much as mothering practices have changed over the years, the fundamental building blocks of love and service at its core remain the same. A mother’s love has to be strong and real enough to be sacrificial, so that for our children’s eternal salvation we have to be actually willing to love until it hurts. Bl. Teresa of Calcutta often said that we need to love until it hurts. We can’t answer our Lord with a halfhearted yes to our vocation of motherhood. We need to be ready to dive wholeheartedly into it!

I am heartened that Catholic women’s study groups are springing up all over where women gather, either through the Internet or—even better—in person at homes or parishes. Women want to learn more about their Catholic faith, and they feel an urge to share their deep interior convictions with other women. A gathering of faithful women can be very healing, loving, and encouraging for all involved.

Women possess many God-given gifts that are meant to be shared. My hope is that, after studying and sharing together, they will also bring those gifts to the world through their love, example, and prayer.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, The history of civilization could actually be written in terms of the level of its women.¹ His sentiment gives us much to think about. Women can actually change history! Let’s pray that we women can be instrumental, by God’s grace, in creating change in our culture.

Because I know just how busy women are, you’re certainly not expected to have Evangelium Vitae, Mulieris Dignitatem, Familiaris Consortio, Gaudium et Spes, or even the Catechism memorized or readily available in your back pocket or purse or on your night table! I like to weave pertinent Church teaching into my books, articles, and talks to provide essential information to teach, uplift, encourage, and make available to my listeners and readers. For the most part, you won’t have to look up a verse or teaching while reading this book. That means you can sit back, enjoy, and absorb.

Down to the nitty-gritty: In Embracing Motherhood we will acknowledge that it is not an easy task to raise children in today’s culture, and we’ll delight in the joys and blessings that are granted to mothers as we usher our children through life, raising our little saints to heaven. We’ll also talk about some of the tough subjects that many mothers today are exposed to or are experiencing.

Countless women around the world have shared their woes with me. With their permission, I’m sharing them with you in an effort to aid Catholic mothers striving to work out their salvation within the walls of their domestic church. All the stories in this book are true, but some of the names have been changed to protect identities.

I pray that this book will serve you in your own Catholic mothering and that it may also be a tool with which to help, encourage, and enlighten others when used within a study group. All throughout, you’ll explore the numerous facets of motherhood, discovering tools to navigate your rich yet challenging journey so that, equipped with insight and wisdom, you can endeavor to do your job well, please God, and love your children to heaven, while embracing motherhood with all your hearts!

CHAPTER ONE

Blessed With Little Souls

You formed my innermost being.

—Psalm 139:13, NAB

GOD GIVES MOTHERS AN AMAZING gift when he blesses them with a unique and unrepeatable new life. Nothing can compare to the exhilaration in a hopeful new mother’s heart at the sight of a positive pregnancy test when she has been praying and waiting for that moment. Or to the excitement of a mother who has been eagerly awaiting a new life in her arms through adoption when she receives the news of approval! Mothers all over the world share this common bond of joy about life.

Mothers may consider a pregnancy as a nine-month series of events—a bit (or a lot!) of morning sickness, fatigue, a protruding abdomen, flutters and movements within, and little feet jabbing them in the rib cage. And then, just a little while later, come the sweet baby coos, peach-fuzz hair, and chubby, dimpled arms and legs that fill the new mother’s world.

Bl. John Paul II has said, In the newborn child is realized the common good of the family. And Bishop Amphilochius, whom Bl. John Paul II quotes in Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), considered the great sacrament of holy matrimony, in which all of what I just described occurs, as chosen and elevated above all other earthly gifts and as the begetter of humanity, the creator of images of God.¹

We may not think of our babies as images of God while we are feeding them, changing their diapers, and totally immersed in their care, but they, in fact, are! Bl. John Paul II reminds us: Thus, a man and woman joined in matrimony become partners in a divine undertaking: through the act of procreation, God’s gift is accepted and a new life opens to the future.²

I have often expressed that there is no greater gift than to be able to cooperate with God to bring life into the world. Babies are an incredible gift of God’s love coming to us within the loving marital embrace, or through the gift of adoption. Sometimes I think that women forget that it’s never our right to have a child. A child is God’s gift to us.

What does the Church teach us about our responsibility as Catholics to be open to new life? I’ll cite just a few examples here, but there are plenty more. Let’s start at the beginning. In Genesis we are told, God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it’ (Genesis 1:28). As well, we learn from Genesis, When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them ‘Humankind’ when they were created (Genesis 5:1–2, NRSV).

Not every Pre-Cana conference or marriage-preparation class gives the accurate teaching of the Church in this regard. I remember vividly that at the Pre-Cana conference I attended, we were all told that family planning is between your doctor and you. Even though I was a young twentysomething at the time, it didn’t take long before I figured out that the conference people were in error. But not everyone may realize this. After all, when we participate in a Church-sponsored teaching event, we expect, well, Church teaching, which sadly is not always the case.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (which I’ll later refer to as CCC or "the Catechism") instructs us:

So the Church, which is on the side of life teaches that each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life. This particular doctrine, expounded upon on numerous occasions by the Magisterium, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.³

The Church has forever been in favor of defending life against all attacks, in whatever condition or state of development it is found.⁴ I highly recommend that you get your hands on a copy of Familiaris Consortio, this apostolic exhortation by Bl. John