The Mission of Motherhood: A Manual for Christian Moms

I just finished The Mission of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson, and it was by far the best and most thought provoking book on motherhood that I've read to date. Sally Clarkson is a conservative Christian and very firmly in the camp of "Mom should be at home, making home, if at all possible", yet she manages to express this in a very gently and non-condemning way, acknowledging that there will always be situations in which a mother must reluctantly leave her children in the care of others in order to work.

What Clarkson doesn't apologize for, though, is her belief that from creation, God laid out a beautiful plan for women as mothers, to be the center of their homes, and the nurturer, comforter, and home-creator that children need. The Mission of Motherhood lays out this plan using Biblical principals, fleshes it out and interprets it for mothers today. How can we delight in our children?

What do we do when things seem to be falling apart? How should we deal with the daily stresses of motherhood? Is it possible to repair damage to our relationships already done? What does God really want from us as mothers? What do our children really need from us as mothers? What do we mothers need? The book gives us encouragement for when we fail (because we all will!), Scripture to feed our souls, exercises to get us thinking, activities for our refreshment, and ideas for enjoying our children.

Beyond that, this book reminds us of how God views children, and what our attitude towards them should be. They are blessings, not burdens, and if we have arranged our lives so that our children are bothersome hangers-on rather than delightful additions, we need to rearrange our lives and attitudes until they are in order with what God has said.

Sally Clarkson gives us in this book many practical applications for embracing God's call to motherhood and the home, enduring through the hard times, and allowing the love of God to flow through us to our precious children.

I was personally convicted about the attitudes I tend to slide into at times. I absolutely love my children and I am so grateful to have the opportunity stay at home with them, but there are times when I get caught up in how much mess they've made, how noisy they are, how little time I have, etc.

I lose the joy of motherhood and lose sight of my ultimate goals. The Mission of Motherhood helped me get back on track and reminded me that I need to be concerned less for the grime on the floors and more for the hearts and souls of my children.