Dear Shepherdess: In a few hours my husband and I will be on our way to Australia. We are looking forward to meeting with our friends and members "down under."
In thinking of the month of May we think of springtime and mothers. I always take joy in reading the chapter in The Desire of Ages on "Blessing the Children." The mothers of today are to receive Christ's words with the same faith the mothers showed who took their children to the Master when He was on earth.
He is as truly the helper of mothers today as when He gathered the little ones to His arms in Judea. In every grief and every need He will give com fort and help. "As the mother teaches her children to obey her because they love her, she is teaching them the first lessons in the Christian life." —The Desire of Ages, p. 515.
There is also encouragement for women in general, whether or not they are married or mothers. The author of The Desire of Ages, writing in the church paper, puts it this way: "The Lord has a work for women, as well as for men. They may take their places in His work at this crisis, and He will work through them. If they are imbued with a sense of their duty, and labor under the influence of the Holy Spirit, they will have just the self-possession required for this time. The Saviour will reflect upon these self-sacrificing women the light of His countenance, and will give them a power that exceeds that of men. They can do in families a work that men can not do, a work that reaches the inner life. They can come close to the hearts of those whom men cannot reach. Their labor is needed." —Review and Herald, Aug. 26, 1902.
How fortunate we are to have this kind of direction that helps us know how to minister in this world of turmoil and pain. We can be rich in wisdom and compassion if we only take time to read and study and allow the Lord to make us true shepherdesses under the influence of the Holy Spirit. —With love, Kay.
GRANDMOTHER had a special way of wrinkling up her nose when she had a secret. One look at Grandmother and everybody would say, "Grandmother knows something." Today as Marlyn sat down beside Grandmother, she asked, "Tell me, Grandmother, what will it be like to be a mother?" She saw that nose begin to wrinkle. "Now, don't tell me that is a secret," she laughed. "Here I'm going to be one in three weeks. You have been a mother, grandmother, and great-grand mother; surely, you could tell me what it really means to be a mother."
Still, Marlyn noticed the wrinkled nose didn't change. "I can't tell you, Marlyn, that is something you can't tell—you only experience!
"I could tell you all about the joy of expecting as you two plan for something that will be your very own!"
"Oh, I already know that, Grand mother. It's wonderful!"
"I could tell you of the sickness and pain of childbirth, the waiting hours when you wonder if it will really be worth all this. But when you hold that bundle for the first time, and see that ugly, little, red wrinkled thing, you say, 'Oh, what a darling!' and already you seem to have forgotten those months and hours of pain and discomfort! I could tell you about those nights of weariness, when you walk the floor, saying over and over, 'Why can't I get this child to sleep?' or trying to put food into a mouth that is spurting like a volcano! One dimpled grin and you start singing as you clean up the mess. "When the books are all pulled from the bookcase, the window near the crib washed with Vicks Vapo-Rub, the detergent spilled all over the floor and only bubbles the more as you try to mop it up."
Grandmother looked into the sunset and repeated, "Certain moments linger strangely in the memory—unimportant in themselves, such memories may be—yet they live when other things have faded from the mind. Time, in passing, seems to leave the little things behind.
"If I told you the emptiness that comes with the first day of school, or the frantic watch by the window when your teen-agers have not arrived home, you would say, 'Yes, I know,' but you wouldn't—not yet!
"I could tell you that your heart can stand still, frozen, it would seem, as you rush a bleeding child into the emergency room at the hospital or sit beside a quiet unconscious form and pray, 'Oh, God, please don't take her yet!'
"There would be dreams I could talk about—that you may build—as you wash and iron little dresses: you pretend it is the stark-white nurse's uni form that she will wear some day or the dress she wears as she teaches little ones the better way.
"Your iron glides over that brown shirt, for to you it is a white coat of your doctor son. But the day comes for college, and the would-be nurse's uniform fades into a wedding dress, the doctor's coat an Army uniform, and Mother's dreams go—broken!"
"But, Grandmother, where is that joy of motherhood you hear about?" "It's there, Marlyn! It may come in the form of a little note, scribbled in crayon that says, 'I love you.' Sometimes it comes in a telephone call that says, 'Mother, I had to talk to you,' or a question, 'How long will you have to be gone, Mother?' Then you know that you are needed! You feel that trust and confidence they place in you. You know that those hours of pain and anxiety, sadness and disappointments, were worth it all.
"Someday, Marlyn, you will know that your true 'mother love' is the closest thing to God's love. He who was willing to give all, to be spent for His own, to have them many times disappoint Him, but always willing to forgive and love more. Marlyn, this is your example of true 'mother love!' And some day when your children say, 'My todays are hap pier because of all the yesterdays you filled with love' you will whisper, 'It was worth it all!'"
