Parenting can be a challenge! And mums today have never been busier. 
Author Naomi Starkey knows this only too well.
A working mum with three children, Naomi is also a Christian. No matter what the age of your children, she says, we never stop being their mothers. But do we ever feel good enough or really up to the job? Naomi explored the emotional and spiritual side of mothering in her book ‘Good Enough Mother’. She considers how God is at work even in the most discouraging situations and how he can guide us in this most important role of being a mum. Here’s a brief extract which applies equally to dads! Trying (out) our patience We all know that parents need to be patient – or as patient as they are temperamentally able to be. One of the classic anxieties people express about caring for children is ‘I haven’t got the patience!’ but it is amazing to see how often this attribute can develop in the most unlikely of individuals, over the years of family life. Do we ever think, though, about the importance of long-term patience, the patience we need as we wait to see how our children turn out? Will that half-tamed little bear cub grow up into a civilized almost-adult male? Will that angry, scratchy kitten develop into a poised young woman? It is interesting to note that the very first definition Paul gives of love in 1 Corinthians 13 is that it is ‘patient’. The love that God gives us for our children – and the love he has for us – is quintessentially patient, even though we may not sense that as we wait for a six-year-old to find and put on their school shoes, or remind a 13-year-old yet again to tidy their room. Celebrating love as patient is particularly important as far as ambitions and hopes are concerned, because if we are patient it means that we continue to hope, pray, and to wait as long as necessary for our children’s personalities to unfurl fully and their individual gifts to emerge. During some seasons of life, patience will require us to hold our nerve, count to ten and restrain ourselves from saying all that our irritation or disappointment provokes us to say. Rather than the ‘instant makeover’ approach beloved of so many TV shows, patient yet hopeful parenting means slow parenting, with slow (and not necessarily steady) changes. We have to be willing to work at the pace of the gardener, who improves the soil, plants and prunes and waits for the roots to grow deep, knowing that the flowerbeds will not start to look their best for another year or so. The messy in-between stages are frustrating, but they have to be endured. There are no real short cuts, no ‘quick fix’ solutions, but instead the call to be faithful to the parenting task with which God has blessed us.
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