A Godly Mother

I ran across this quote the other day, a quote about "French" mothers. While it is all well and good to be French if you are French...(Scandanavian and French-inspired decor is all the rage right now!) it is equally well and good to be American, if you are American...and it is best of all to be a believer in Jesus Christ. My citizenship is in heaven, for sure.

Intelligence, Robert Frost said, is a feat of association. My mind, being at the mercy of its associations, rejects the idea that there is anything inherently "French" about being the sort of mother this quote describes, but rather these are qualities of a Godly mother.

I can own that. I'm not French, never will be.

Enjoy the ideas found in this quote from the book Entre Nous (meaning "Between Us", in French. I googled it.) by Debra Ollivier~

"The French (read: Godly) mother is often the source of everything that informs the French (Godly) girl: a sense of the feminine, of social conduct, poise, etiquette and, of course, cooking. She's an arbiter of continuity and tradition, a sort of magistrate who oversees the smooth functioning of family life--managing conflict, diffusing resentments, letting go of grudges in an elegant and seemingly transparent way. Through her all things eventually pass--the family's history as living memory as well as the future."
In a day and age when I see too many mothers get involved in the drama of their teenaged daughters, I am struck by the importance of managing conflict, and setting the example in "diffusing resentments". Why? Apples never fall far from trees.