A Mother's Job

I always enjoy reading Melanie Bettinelli's blog, The Wine-Dark Sea. I find it particularly easy to picture her little daughter Isabella as she is just a couple of weeks older than my Little Cherub, but it is the combination of snippets about Isabella with truly thoughtful posts that mean I am always glad to see The Wine-Dark Sea highlighted on Bloglines.

In a recent post Melanie gets to the heart of a mother's true job ... not just to nurture our children, but to teach them the hope that is in us:

The world is a harsh place. It's a fallen world, a world of sin and thus of suffering. But my primary job as a mother is to teach my children the good news that sin and death have been conquered and human suffering has been redeemed. Although this world is a vale of tears, there is another world that awaits us: heaven. And we can participate in this other world here and now through our love and self-sacrifice and through God's grace in the sacraments, and most especially in the holy sacrifice of the mass which is heaven on earth.

I cannot fully protect Isabella from the harsh realities of living in a world marred by sin. Already I have learned that I cannot shelter her completely from bodily pain, from hunger and tiredness and from fear. But I can teach her love. I can hug her, kiss her, rock her, comfort her when she falls or when she gets a shot. I can teach her about Jesus and help her find hope in the dark times and help her to walk in God's paths so that one day we may both find our true home in the place where there is no pain, no suffering, no sin, only love and peace.

You can read the whole post here.