Living Stones Series: First Published in All Around Old Bridge Publication – May 2024

Read the biography of one of America’s greatest inventors, Thomas Edison, and you will realize the profound impact a mother can make. A poor student, Edison’s mother decided to homeschool him, and he attributed much of his success to her sacrifice and training. “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had someone to live for, someone I must not disappoint,” Edison shared.

Research also proves the immeasurable value of mothering. Mothers are crucial to the emotional, behavioral, intellectual, and social development of their children. Family expert Steve Biddulph sums it up this way, “It now appears that mother-baby interaction, in the first year especially, is the very foundation of human emotions and intelligence. In the most essential terms, love grows the brain.”

And history, too, underscores the point. Mothers have for generations sacrificially given of themselves for the sake of their families. As early as the third century AD, early church father John Chrysostom said, “Higher than a painter, sculptor, than all artists is he who is skilled in the art of forming the soul of a child.”

Perhaps the most famous mother of all time, Mary the mother of Jesus, epitomized this picture of sacrifice, laying aside her youth, comforts, plans, and ultimately experiencing the greatest pain any mother can face – watching her son die. Theodore Roosevelt described the picture of such sacrificial mothering perfectly, saying, “Mothers, and not churches or theological seminaries, make the faith of people.”

We celebrate Mother’s Day this month, and it bears remembering, that motherhood is perhaps the single most influential, even revolutionary role in our culture. Women can be anything, but only women can be mothers!