Mark Conner Family, Relationships, Special Events

The Love of a Mother

This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day, a century-old tradition of taking time to thank and honour our amazing mums. Mums are special people we owe so much to – in addition to our very existence! Most mums are faithful, loyal, hard-working, loving and caring people. We honour and applaud them today. Of course, Mother’s Day brings a variety of emotion with it – gratitude, if you had a great mum, some sadness and pain if you had a difficult or absent mum, and grief if you wanted to be a mum but haven’t yet been able to have children. 

My Mother

My mother was Muriel Joyce Conner (nee Douglas). She was born in Bendigo and grew up there on a sheep farm before meeting my dad and moving to Melbourne. She was a very warm and caring person. I am so thankful for her love and the constant encouragement she gave me as a boy growing up. I miss her hugs and our many conversations together. She passed away suddenly in October, 1990 (see “My Encounter with Grief“).

Kevin and Joyce Conner – Photo taken in Portland, Oregon in the 1980s.

Your Mother?

What was your mother like? Mothers are highly influential people but no mother is perfect. Ideally, they provide care, love, nurture and protection for their children, but that isn’t always the case. In their recent book, Our Mothers, Ourselves: How Understanding Your Mother’s Influence Can Set You on a Path of a Better Life, Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend (best-selling authors of Boundaries) unpack how our mothers shape us – for better or worse, including describing different types of mothers and styles of mothering. These include the Phantom Mum, the China Doll Mum, the Controlling Mother, the Trophy Mum, the Still-the-Boss Mum, and the American Express Mum. It is easy to dismiss the past, but even as adults we need to understand our mother’s pervasive influence on our life.

No matter what our mother was like, we need to give them love and respect, gratitude, and forgiveness. In addition, we need to “leave” appropriately and be who we are, severing that umbilical cord of dependence, as it were. Then we return, hopefully as friends.

The Art of Mothering

All mothers should seek to be the best mothers that they can be. This includes making a choice to:

  1. Love unconditionally. True love is not just an emotion but is an act of will to do what is best for another person, regardless of what they are like. Kids aren’t perfect yet they need to know they are loved … no matter what. 
  2. Affirm frequently. Words are powerful (Proverbs 18:21). Use them for good – to build up your children (Ephesians 4:29). Children thrive under encouragement, affirmation and praise.
  3. Instruct clearly. Establish clear expectations and consequences, then follow through consistently. Teach desired behaviour (what) and the values behind it (why). Example is essential (kids do what they see), as is a loving relationship. 
  4. Discipline lovingly. Loving discipline is about giving appropriate consequences for disobedience, not abuse or harsh, angry punishment.
  5. Empower fully. As children grow and mature, empower them more to make their own decisions and be responsible for their own lives. Our kids are really not ours. We don’t own or possess them. They are gifts …. loaned for a time. Help them become who they were designed to be. Don’t project your own wishes on them. Then trust God and let go of any unnecessary guilt or condemnation for the choices they may choose to make. 

God as Mother?

Sometimes mums can find it difficult to see themselves as a reflection of the image of God. This may be because of the number of male references to God in the Bible, such as ‘king’ or ‘Father’. But God is not male! God created women so if he was a man this would be impossible because we all know that men know nothing about women! 

God is Spirit. He transcends gender yet includes what we know as male and female. Men and women were both created in God’s image. God has both masculine and feminine qualities, including motherly traits of caretaker, comforter and nurturer (see Isaiah 42:14; 49:14-16; 66:13. Hosea 13:8. Matthew 23:37). That’s why it takes both men and women to reflect God accurately.

Mums – like all women, you are made in the image of God. You reflect his nature and his characteristics … even in the mothering of your children. Walk with a sense of dignity and honour. You matter … just because of who you are.

Reflections Questions

  1. What does Mother’s Day mean to you?
  2. Think about your own mother. What are you thankful for? What was difficult?
  3. Reflect on the “art of mothering”. Reflect on how God is the model of the perfect parent. 
  4. Consider the feminine aspects of God’s nature – love, care and nurture. Why do we struggle with seeing God this way? What do we miss out by thinking of God only in male images?
  5. Reflect on the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus. What can we learn from her? A few years back, I shared a message on “Jesus and His Mother“. You can listen to the message on my podcast (also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify) or watch the message.
  6. Finish by saying a prayer for all of our family relationships. 
Mark Conner Current Issues, Personal Development, Spirituality

Threshold Times

Good morning from Melbourne! It’s getting a little cooler here as Autumn kicks in (or is it Winter already!?). I love this season, especially the beautiful autumn leaves everywhere. Walking each morning and evening in the nearby Edinburg Gardens with my lovely wife and our quirky pugalier is a highlight of my day.

Today begins another week in lockdown for us – our 6th week, I believe. There is talk of easing the restrictions … but who knows how long we will have to continue to bunker down. Other than missing connecting personally with family and friends, I have really enjoyed the gift of time that this coronavirus pandemic has forced on us. Time to be at home – less rushed, less travel, more cooking, and more time to read and reflect.

All sorts of questions emerge for me:

  1. I wonder what life will be like on the other side of this?
  2. Will we all simply go back to ‘normal’?
  3. OR will life be different? Interestingly, according to a recent survey, only 9% of Britons want to return to life as it was!
  4. What do I want to be different?
  5. What did we learn from this crisis?
  6. What new opportunities have emerged that need embracing from these turbulent times?
  7. What values do I desire to more firmly live out going forward?
  8. How will my relationships be different?
  9. How will my work (or study) life change, if at all?
  10. What new habits will I seek to reinforce?

In many ways, major life and societal interruptions (or disruptions!) like this can be times of significant transition. Could this even become a major threshold – for you, for me, and for all humanity? I sure hope so.

Four years ago today, I read about the concept of ‘threshold’ from Irish poet and author John O’Donohue. I copied his thoughts into my journal at the time and they became very significant for me. I was on the precipice of stepping out into an entirely new world (refer to my poem The Great Unknown and One Year On). As I read his words again this morning, I noted how true they are … and even more so for me today.

I share these thoughts with you below and I hope they may be insightful for you at this time. Is it time to walk through the wardrobe into a very different tomorrow? Is it time for you to cross the threshold?

To Cross The Thresholds Worthily: When A Great Moment Knocks On The Door Of Your Heart

It remains the dream of every life to realize itself, to reach out and lift oneself up to greater heights. A life that continues to remain on the safe side of its own habits and repetitions, that never engages with the risk of its own possibility, remains an unlived life. There is within each heart a hidden voice that calls out for freedom and creativity. We often linger for years in spaces that are too small and shabby for the grandeur of our spirit. Yet experience always remains faithful to us. If lived truthfully and generously, it will always guide us toward the real pastures.

Looking back along a life’s journey, you come to see how each of the central phases of your life began at a decisive threshold where you left one way of being and entered another. A threshold is not simply an accidental line that happens to separate one region from another. It is an intense frontier that divides a world of feeling from another. Often a threshold becomes clearly visible only once you have crossed it. Crossing can often mean the total loss of all you enjoyed while on the other side; it becomes a dividing line between the past and the future. More often than not the reason you cannot return to where you were is that you have changed; you are no longer the one who crossed over. It is interesting that when Jesus cured the blind man, he instructed him not to go back into the village. Having crossed the threshold into vision, his life was no longer to be lived in the constricted mode of blindness; new vision meant new pastures.

Today many people describe themselves as “being in transition.” In a culture governed by speed, this is to be expected, for the exterior rate of change is relentless. This “transition” can refer to relationships, work, and location; or more significantly, to the inner life and way of viewing the world. Yet the word transition seems to pale, functional, almost inadequate and impersonal, and does not have the same intensity or psychic weight as perhaps the word threshold evokes. The word threshold was related to the word thresh, which was the separation of the grain from the husk or straw when oats were flailed. It also includes the notions of entrance, crossing, border, and beginning. To cross a threshold is to leave behind the husk and arrive at the grain.

John O’Donohue

(To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings)