Some women just don’t know how to nurture their children. Yesterday I was sitting in my child’s second grade glass with other parents and children, including non-school age ones, when one baby, about 2 or 3, whined just a bit too much for his mom so she popped him. I don’t know where she hit him but I heard the sound and then him crying as he blinked huge tears from his eyes that begged her to hug him, love him, what seemed like what his whining was about in the first place. She ignored his little brown face that beckoned to be kissed and for tears to be wiped away. Instead, she dismissed him to go with his older sister so she could nurture him instead.
As we observe domestic violence awareness month, with a particular emphasis on women, I don’t want us to forget the children. Granted, it’s hard to separate the focus on children when you are speaking about women who suffer abuse. Many times children experience abuse at the hands of their mother’s abusers. If they don’t suffer physical abuse, watching their mother suffer results in their arrested psychological, emotional, and social development among other stagnations. But my focus for this post is not physical violence against children at the hands of their fathers or mothers’ boyfriends but is on spiritual abuse against children at the hands of their own mothers.
With the broad definition of abuse being the improper treatment of somebody, especially on a consistent basis, I find that Christian mothers spiritually abuse their children when they don’t teach them spiritual principles to help them develop into healthy Christ-like human beings. Their children are bound to mirror the world’s ways that say the best success is financial and material gain. This spiritual abuse happens because some women simply don’t know what to do. Well, my women’s pastor, Renee M. Carr of Detroit’s Evangel Ministries, gives the first step that’s necessary to spiritually nurturing children: having what she calls “maternal vision.”
Maternal vision is to perceive by any of your senses what must be done with your child; to have regard for and to cherish them. In other words, you must be able to see what your child can become and, therefore, understand what needs to be done to help him or her to get there. Or in the negative sense, prevent him or her from getting there. God has wonderful plans in store for your children and Satan has diabolical ones. It’s our job as mothers to have maternal vision so we bring God’s plan to fruition and frustrate Satan’s devices so we nurture spiritually healthy children. We must see what type of parent, employer or employee, and friend they can become. We must see what type of moral agent they can become. In essence, we must see how God would have them impact the world. Begin to pray that God will open your eyes and other senses so you see His and Satan’s plans for your child so you can begin to develop a plan to spiritually nurture your child with precision.
In the next few posts, I plan to discuss more of Pastor Carr’s maternal vision, including how to get it and once you get it, what needs to be done to put it in motion. Stay tuned.
Copyright 2009 by Rhonda J. Smith