Mother and daughter sisterhood
12 Baskets Full
A Mother’s Basket
How I love the following story I came across many moons ago. While it was supposed to inspire my children to write a piece about a family weekend away, I found it a most apt illustration of a foundational truth about families!
Grandma frowned and groaned as I dropped the watermelon on the hard concrete, breaking the fruit into dozens of messy pieces. “I told you she was too small to carry that big watermelon!” chided Grandma. Mom rolled her eyes in response and snapped, “I’ll get the other one.”
Mom grabbed one of the two remaining watermelons and headed for the front door of the cabin. Unfortunately, she slipped on a piece of watermelon rind and fell onto the lawn. The watermelon she had been carrying was launched into the air like a rocket, landing with a loud splat on the cabin’s front steps.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” shouted Grandma. “Looks like I’m going to have to do this myself if I want it done right!” In a huff, Grandma grabbed the lone remaining watermelon, tucked it under her arm and headed up the sidewalk to the cabin with a determined look on her face.
Reaching the front door, she shifted the watermelon to her other hand as she reached for the handle. But in a fateful split second, the watermelon squirted out of her grasp and, like the two others before it, sacrificed itself on the concrete path between the car and the cabin.
Mom and I doubled over, howling with laughter. Grandma, a look of stunned disbelief on her face, sunk to the ground and eventually joined Mom and me in a good laugh at what would become known as The Great Watermelon Debacle of 1977. We all settled for oranges instead.
We all drop the proverbial ‘watermelon’ at one stage or another, don’t we? None of the generations are exempted from making mistakes – whether favoritism, being inconsistent, lack of boundaries or over protecting our children. Francine Rivers writes in Book II of Martha’s Legacy, ‘Her Daughter’s Dream,’ the following: “We try to do a little better than the previous generation and find out in the end we’ve made the same mistakes without intending.”
Let’s get practical!
No other relationship is so fraught with hurt, rejection and pain as a parent-child relationship. As we are specifically talking about a mother-daughter connection this month, the following quote comes to mind: while grace is getting what you don’t deserve, mercy is not getting what you do deserve. It is my sincere prayer that the gifts to follow will speak of both grace and mercy.
Speak Life: Encourage one another daily!
God created women as relators and gave us an amazing capacity for verbal communication. The reason why forming deep relational bonds is at the core of being a woman. But together with this blessing came a curse – a woman’s tendency to gossip. Titus 2:3 says that woman “are to be reverent in behaviour, not slanderers.” The NASB says they should not be “malicious gossips” and the KJV mentions “false accusers.” These are all translations of the Greek word diabolos, the word from which we get our English word diabolical. In other words, when we slander and gossip, we are “devil-like”, and our speech resembles his! [1]
Last month we did a social media campaign called #Speak Life where we intentionally blessed our children. Let us continue along those lines, making sure our hearts before God are pure and blameless, for then our conversation will be full of grace and seasoned with salt.
Write a letter or thank you note, send a Whattsapp or a voice note to your Mother or Grandmother, thanking them for all they have done for you, all the good things you learnt from them, the many blessings you received from them.
Seek Solitude:
‘You have to come tuck me in!” Incredulously my jaw dropped as the past 12 hours played itself off in my mind. I have been with the kids the entire day – since long before breakfast. I was involved with all their activities, from home schooling in the morning, to various afternoon activities. This particular day had been a marathon. It was 8 pm and I couldn’t help myself.
“Are you not tired of me yet?” I blurted out.
But starry eyes and thin steely arms around my neck convinced me otherwise. It can certainly be seen as the highest compliment, but I want to tell you that there are seasons and then there are SEASONS!
Enjoy filling your basket with a bath bomb, a face masks or a gift card to a beauty salon where a tired Mum can have either a manicure, pedicure, facial or a hot stone massage. The idea is that this gift will enable a mum with small children, or a hard-working older mum with back spasms and aching feet, to relax her body and quiet her soul for a short while.
Embrace Sisterhood:
A wonderful answer indeed – sisterhood. Knowing that you are not alone in your season: that other Mums with toddlers are tired too, other Mums with teenagers also worried about social media and other Mums facing an empty nest, also in search of purpose.
One Mum remembers with pleasure how a monthly get-together changed her life. “Through it all, I’ve learned that other women’s husbands aren’t perfect either, that kids are always in some kind of stage, and that laughter, love and lunch can smooth out just about any bump. And as Husband points out, it’s a lot cheaper than therapy.”[2]
[1] True Woman 201, Interior Design, pg. 121
[2] Moms Go Where Angels Fear to Thread – Adventures in Motherhood by Joan W. Anderson, pg. 26
