The Beauty of Motherhood

My day started at 11:56 pm on the day before when my 3 year old woke from a bad dream related to a lion. It began again at 3:13 am when the door to the garage swung open in the wind and tripped the house alarm, and really got going at 6:43 am when people began tumbling into the kitchen looking for breakfast and coffee. I balance nap times for my toddler while shuttling my tweens and teens to various activities, my college aged kids needing to borrow the van to take friends to the airport, and my elementary school kids needing me to help them floss their teeth and find their favorite soccer ball. Parenthood is a frenzy of energy, a blur of activity, a tangle of emotions, but wrapped up in the beautiful package of young humans that embody everything that is good in this life. Parenthood is beautiful. When The Beauty of Motherhood by Kimberly Knowle-Zeller and Erin Strybis landed on my desk, I became quite excited about a devotional that spoke to the sacred vocation of parenting.

The Beauty of Motherhood is a devotional written for parents of infants, toddlers, and young children, particularly ones that are in the throes of parenting for the first time. The devotions are broken into three sections; one for each of the above stages of childhood. Each devotion is titled and begins with a short passage from Scripture, followed by a devotion/reflection based upon the title. A practice is suggested and followed by a prayer. Themes range from listening to others, being present, embracing fullness, and wonderfully made. The authors write from their own parenting experiences. Other than a devotion written about body image post delivery and language of ‘mother’ and ‘mothering’, the themes apply to parents of all genders. The devotions are written in accessible language, formatted clearly enough for even the most sleep deprived parent to access, and peppered with personal anecdotes from the authors’ parenting experiences, making the devotions relatable. 

This little devotional has many uses in your ministry. It would make a lovely new parent gift. It would be a wonderful spine for a parenting small group- the titles/themes are ones that are very relatable and will foster companionable conversation. It would be wonderful used as inspiration for your own congregation’s additions to this type of devotional; The Beauty of Parenting at (insert church name here). Imagine what a meaningful care package you could make with a copy of The Beauty of Motherhood, your congregation’s The Beauty of Parenting, a quality children’s Bible, some stickers with blessings placed on a few packs of baby wipes, and a gift card to a local restaurant for dinner. I would love to run a four week session with tween and teens on The Beauty of Parenting, using a few of the titles of devotions from The Beauty of Motherhood and having them create paintings or writings about what they wished parents knew about how they relate to these themes as tweens and teens. Getting that insight would be so, so valuable, as would running the same project with the grandparents and great grandparents in the congregation. You can get a lot of mileage out of this resource!