To mothers everywhere

Have you ever noticed how quickly a child can “move on”? How completely and immediately children turn from something they don’t understand toward what they can understand? How bravely they trust! How fully they surrender to those who care for them. How simple their love. This is no accident. They come programmed for this kind of love; totally prepared to express and embody trust and innocence. And guess what? It’s the same for you.

Innocence protects and governs you, just as it does your children. Innocence is like a clean white towel taken warm out of the dryer. You are wrapped up inside it right now, protected in the soft embrace of purest Love.

Jesus said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of The Christian Science Monitor, said, “Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 236). Who can deny the truth of these statements? Who in his right mind would reject the spiritual innocence of a child?

A child is clearly the idea of pure good – of God. She or he always has been and always will be such. It must follow then that the mother is just as pure. Just as dear. Just as protected from all evil beliefs. A mother is just as much the idea of innocent good as the child – safe, free, trusting, strong, and brave.

But what if you’re a mother burdened with financial problems, struggling with loneliness or desperation? What if you’re wondering where your family’s next meal will come from? Are you feeling anxious, fearful, or depressed? Can this spiritual innocence protect and support you, too?

Of course it can. This same innocence can lift your thought out of panic or worry; indeed, out of a sense of mortality. It stops what children’s book author Shel Silverstein calls “the raging what ifs” in their tracks. It keeps fear from finding a projection screen. Moreover, since your innocent, childlike, spiritual consciousness has its source in the light of Truth, God, dark mortal thoughts have no actual power to influence your consciousness. Thoughts such as discouragement, desperation, and depression disappear and dissolve in the light of true innocence. This is true protection and support to any mother struggling with worry or concern.

Again, we can acknowledge with Mrs. Eddy that children are “the spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love” (Science and Health, p. 582). This enables us to earnestly embrace that same holy innocence as the real identity of mothers everywhere. From a spiritual standpoint, man is immortal and there is only one Love. Every human mother, including you, has the right to feel and be comforted by the innocence of Love. In fact, you have never been beyond Love’s care anymore than your child has. True motherhood has never been saddled with fear, concern, or worry.

The world holds a variety of strong, utterly unfair beliefs about motherhood. It promotes the belief that mothers were actually born to suffer, then to struggle and worry. Ignorant matter-based thinking like this identifies mothers as mostly mortal conveyances or material intermediaries – viewing human life as a fragile balance between nothing, something, and then more nothing. It also pegs mothers as solely defined by their relationships to their children with little or no identity of their own.

But the goodness of your mothering is a tangible expression of the motherhood of God, the one infinite Father-Mother of each one of us, the source of true motherhood. God’s motherhood never fades or changes, feels loss or gain. It exists forever as a constant beam of innocent, immortal Love.

The best thing we can do as mothers is to embrace this immortal motherhood of God as our own. We are inseparable from it. God is the Mother – and She imparts only love, comfort, intuition, calm, peace, rest, indomitable strength, and yes, innocence.

That’s why you are free of the swirl of beliefs associated with mortal motherhood. Right now, this moment, you are completely innocent of suffering, worry, or fear, because you, too, are God’s unburdened, capable, fulfilled, naturally courageous child – wrapped up tight in the comforting arms of your own divine Mother – Love.