The Tribune

By Rev Angela Palacious

THE CALL

This call starts from when your child is in the womb. Once you know that you are pregnant, love needs to flow to the baby. When I speak to the teen mothers at Providing Access to Continuing Education (PACE), I encourage them to heal and forgive as best they can so as to filter out all negativity that is like an internal poison to them and their child.

It may be easy to love a little baby: so cute and cuddly, like an angel when they sleep. It is easy to feel like a grown woman caring for a dependent person, but it takes more than pregnancy to become mature. We have to love young mothers, help them learn how to love their babies, because sometimes they may have been looking for love in the wrong place.

As older women of God, we have to love our younger women. We have to help our younger women heal and not become mothers before God’s time. Our call is to mother our people to accomplish their greatness.

TENDER LOVE

Sometimes love has to be only tender love. It has to be gentle and warm. We need to be affectionate, supportive, sensitive, and thoughtful. We have to praise and encourage our children, we have to hug and kiss them right up to adulthood. We are often so harsh. We speak roughly and wound our children’s spirits. Let us love with the love of the Lord wanting the best for them, and for them to be their best.

TOUGH LOVE

At times, we may have to use tough love. We have to be very firm, disciplining with reward and punishing appropriately when necessary. Remember, discipline (like making disciples) is teaching, leading by example and instruction. Do not be swayed to give in to whining, or pouting or acting out. Stand your ground and be firm. Know what God desires of you. Obey the call to be a person of integrity.

Do not encourage your children in illegal or immoral behaviour. Do not cloak or cover up for them. Right is right and wrong is wrong. You have to answer to God. I always told my son: “I have to answer to God when you are underage then you can answer to God for yourself.” Let me add, when they are under your roof, you also have to demand that they answer to you if they are not checking for God.

No matter how they behave, you try always to be respectful, loving, and peaceful as much as possible because you are always prayerful.

CALL TO PRAYER

• Daily fervent prayer: Prayer is your call because it is the only thing that will keep you sane in a crazy world. Prayer is your anchor in the storm; it is your consolation when your heart breaks; it is your power when you feel you cannot go on. Without the Lord, where would you be and to whom could you turn? When your children hurt, you hurt. Many of us know what it is to lie prostrate on the floor allowing our tears to soak the carpet until we can cry no more.

• Praying mothers in the Bible: – Moses’ mother, Jochebed, was a praying woman, and God gave her a way to save her son. She and her daughter Miriam put him in a basket and God allowed Pharoah’s daughter to take him out and mother him in preparation for his later leadership role.

– Hannah prayed for a child with such intensity that the priest in the temple thought that she was drunk because she prayed silently. Samuel was born and nurtured to become one of the greatest prophets in the Old Testament.

– Mary would have prayed for Jesus throughout his early years and later life. She would not have forgotten the words of the angel who came to her, and those of Simeon and Anna in the temple. How she must have prayed when the plots against him increased, and no one can measure her anguish watching him nailed to the cross.

• Persistent prayer: Do not stop praying for your wayward children, asking God to touch them. Do not stop praying for your children to be protected from bullies in school and from accidents while on the streets.

Pray for their protection from violence and abuse, especially in your own home as well as from strangers. The enemy wants to destroy our families; we have to fight on our knees and march in the streets if need be.

Pray when you wake up.

Pray as you prepare for work.

Pray while you work or remain at home.

Pray in the evening and in the night time.

God bless you as you seek to be faithful to a mother’s call.