Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to talk to mothers from very different backgrounds and cultures. This blog is about a tale of three of those mothers who seem to be very different. One mother is a chocolate woman who lives in a small apartment in West Jackson. One mother is a vanilla woman who lives in a large house in one of the suburbs of Jackson. One mother is a cafe au lait woman living in a small mud hut in the mountains outside of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
The mother in Jackson reminded me of my mother when I was a teenager. She was caring and tough at the same time, but I could tell that they knew she meant what she said. This mother was going through a rough time financially, but her main concern was getting her girls into the best high school possible.
While on a mission trip, I remember asking (through a translator) the Honduran mother if there was anything she wanted us to pray about. Standing there on a dirt floor of the hut that was smaller than my family room, I expected her to ask for a better house or something like that. Her response was, “Quiero que mis hijos vayan a la Universidad.”— “I want my children to go to college.”
In talking to the mother in the suburbs, I heard a concerned parent wondering if they were doing everything they could to prepare their kids’ for future. She was concerned that all of the outside activities were taking too much time away from the children’s schoolwork. Despite all of her concerns, she said that at the end of the day; “I just want them to follow Christ wherever He leads them.”
Where these mothers live, the size and furnishings of their dwellings are very different, but the prayers whispered in those places are the same. As I reflect on the conversations I had with each of these mothers, it’s easy for me to conclude that their biggest concern was for their children. Nothing was more important.
I think if you were to gather 2,000 mothers from all over the world and ask what’s most important to them, we would discover that more of the answers would also be the same. Mothers are more alike than we think. Actually, we all are more alike than we think.
hamsight: we all are more alike than we think
(picture: classroom in a small village outside of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.)
Hamsights 