Entry No. 06: The Stewardship Of A Hundred Daily Conversations

One key aspect of mothering is the stewarding of a hundred daily conversations. It's the ministry of listening, the art of receiving their ideas and giving them the dignity of being taken seriously.

Many times at the end of the day, I realize that I am mentally worn from a day full of relational work with my toddlers. If you pay attention, you realize that they make a million observations a minute, and every one of these comments requires a response from, well, you.

“Mama, look!”
“What’s that?”
“Look at this!"

They are verbally processing their worlds, and they require a sounding board, as if they’d like to ensure that what they see is really there. Reality needs confirmation when you’re new to things.

The repetition can be overwhelming. But the manner in which you receive each little thought can either build them up or tear them down. Cumulatively, it constitutes the air they breathe as they draw up the courage to learn the next something new.

When they call on us, they give us a piece of themselves. How will you receive them?

The way you keep each thought and give a worthy response is the building block for that child’s relational confidence. It’s the bridge to new ideas and horizons in God’s world to explore.

What is the look in your eye as you turn to listen for the thousandth time? What is the tone in your voice as you repeat the same answer for the third time in a row? Do you respond with your eyes locked on theirs, or kept down on the work you’d like to finish? What a call to an endurance of compassion.

The relational work you’re doing now is setting foundations for the heavier, scarier, more vulnerable things that are coming for them. May the lines remain open as they grow. May their questions, confessions, and doubts find a bed of compassion that has not worn out in you, their mother.

May this ministry know great longevity, and lead them to the heart of Christ, who forgives and welcomes us with the same force of compassion each and every time we stumble in our fight against sin, all the way to the Day of the Lord.