On motherhood, cultivating wonder, and the quiet privilege of opening our children’s eyes to the beauty of God’s world.
I’ve been thinking lately about the art of invitation.
Not the sort of invitation that arrives in the post, requesting our presence at a special occasion, but something much quieter. Something that I am beginning to recognise as one of the beautiful responsibilities entrusted to me as a mother.
The invitation to come and see.
To come and discover.
To come and wonder.
To come and experience something good, beautiful, meaningful and awe-inspiring.
As a mother of four boys, so much of my day is spent instructing, correcting, reminding, organising and meeting needs. There are meals to prepare, lessons to teach, disagreements to settle, laundry to fold and a seemingly endless stream of questions to answer.
Somewhere in the midst of all of this, I can so easily forget that I have also been given the extraordinary privilege of introducing four little souls to the world.
Not merely teaching them how to live in it, but helping them to see it.
And goodness, what a world there is to see. I don’t often think of it in this way because navigating all the demands of adulthood is all consuming. If I am very honest, it can leave me feeling stripped raw of any potential joy or excitement for life.
Children are born with a sense of wonder
One of the things I find so fascinating about children is their ability to be utterly captivated by things we adults have long stopped noticing.
An ant making its way across the pavement.
The shape of the moon.
A particularly interesting stone.
The mechanics of a machine.
The way rain collects on a leaf.
The sheer delight of discovering how something works.
What we might dismiss as ordinary can become an entire world of fascination to a child. I wonder sometimes whether part of growing older is not that the world becomes less wonderful, but that we become less attentive to its wonders because other things take their place?
We become busy. Preoccupied. Efficient.
We have places to be and things to accomplish. All the time.
And in our hurry, we lose the ability to linger.
Yet children seem to possess this wonderful instinct to stop, examine, question and marvel.
I am learning that perhaps my role is not always to hurry them along, but sometimes to allow myself to be drawn into their wonder.
To bend down and look.
To listen to the question.
To resist the urge to say, “Come on, we need to go.” ha!
To remember that the very thing interrupting my plans might be an opportunity to share something beautiful with my child.
Invitation rather than imposition
I think there is a subtle but important distinction between exposing our children to good things and inviting them into them. As a mother who cares deeply about the character, education and spiritual formation of her children, I naturally have hopes for the sort of young men my boys will become.
I want them to love what is true.
To recognise what is good.
To appreciate beauty.
To be curious, thoughtful, courageous and kind.
I want them to develop a love for learning, an appreciation for creation, a hunger for wisdom and, above all, a heart that knows and loves the Lord.
Yet I am learning that these things cannot simply be demanded into existence.
A love for beauty cannot always be taught through instruction.
A sense of wonder cannot be forced.
A genuine appreciation for what is good often begins with an invitation.
“Come, let me show you something.”
“Listen to this beautiful piece of music.”
“Look at the colours in the sky.”
“Shall we read this together?”
“Isn’t it amazing how God designed that?”
There is something wonderfully gentle about invitation.
It makes room for curiosity and awakens interest rather than merely demanding attention.
It allows a child to encounter something for himself and perhaps most importantly, it communicates that the world is full of things worth discovering.
I must first learn to notice
I am becoming increasingly convinced that if I want to raise children who recognise beauty, goodness and wonder, I must be willing to cultivate those things in my own heart, and that is really hard sometimes.
I cannot continually rush through life and expect my children to learn the art of slowing down.
I cannot remain indifferent to the beauty around me and expect them to develop a deep appreciation for it.
I cannot speak endlessly about the goodness of God whilst rarely pausing to marvel at the evidence of His handiwork.
This is a challenge to me.
Because the truth is, motherhood can be exhausting.
Most days I am overstimulated, tired and simply trying to get through the next few hours. I have little mental capacity for anything beyond what is immediately required of me.
On those days, wonder can feel like a luxury. Yet, I know that the invitation begins with me.
Perhaps I, too, need to be reminded to look up.
To notice the changing seasons.
To delight in a beautifully written sentence.
To appreciate a meal prepared with care.
To marvel at the intricacy of creation.
To enjoy something simply because it is lovely, rather than because it is productive.
I don’t want to become so consumed with the work of raising my children that I forget to enjoy the world alongside them.
I want them to remember a mother who was not only concerned with what needed to be done, but who also knew how to delight in what was good.
Not perfectly. Not every moment.
But intentionally.
Opening the door to what is good
When I think about the things I want to invite my boys into, I realise that so many of them are wonderfully simple.
- Beautiful books.
- Good music.
- Thoughtful conversations.
- Nature walks.
- Art.
- Poetry.
- Cooking.
- Gardening.
- The satisfaction that comes from creating something with our hands.
- The results of diligent work.
- The joy of serving another person.
- The beauty of hospitality.
- The love that builds from us all sitting together and reading a story.
And on and on I could go…
These are not merely activities to fill our days, they are opportunities to shape our children’s affections and to introduce them to things that are worthy of their attention.
To gently expand their understanding of what makes life rich and meaningful.
And I am learning that I don’t always need an elaborate lesson plan to do this.
Sometimes the invitation is simply leaving a beautiful book on the table.
Sometimes it is playing some music while we work, or calling the boys to the window to watch a spectacular sunset.
Sometimes it is inviting one of them to help prepare a meal, even though I know it will take twice as long and get very messy!
I think that there is something particularly lovely about allowing our children to see that we, too, are learners.
That we still have questions.
That we are still discovering.
That we haven’t outgrown the ability to be amazed.
Teaching them to see the Creator through his creation
As a Christian mother, this invitation into goodness and beauty carries an even deeper significance because I believe that the world is not merely a collection of interesting things to observe.
It is the handiwork of a glorious Creator.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” — Psalm 19:1, KJV
When I invite my children to marvel at the stars, I am inviting them to consider the One who placed them there.
When we study the extraordinary detail of a flower we are witnessing the creativity of God.
When we experience kindness, generosity, forgiveness or sacrificial love, we catch glimpses of the goodness He calls us to reflect.
I want my boys to understand that our faith is not confined to Sunday mornings, Bible lessons or family devotions.
It reaches into the ordinary moments of our days.
I want them to develop eyes that recognise the goodness of God in places they might otherwise overlook.
Not because I have instructed them to find a spiritual lesson in everything, but because they have grown up in a home where gratitude, curiosity and reverence are woven into the fabric of everyday life.
Where wonder naturally leads us towards worship. It begins with us, and that truly is my personal challenge.
Making room for their own discoveries
There is another part of this that I am learning, too.
An invitation must leave room for a response.
Sometimes that response may not be what I expected. A book I find captivating may not immediately interest one of my boys. A beautiful landscape may be far less exciting to them than the enormous digger parked beside it! A carefully planned nature walk may become an expedition in search of sticks, muddy puddles and interesting insects.
And perhaps that is just all right.
The purpose of invitation is not to manufacture children who appreciate exactly what I appreciate. It is to awaken their capacity to appreciate.
To help them become people who can recognise goodness and beauty for themselves.
My boys are wonderfully different, and I want to honour that.
One is drawn to the elegance of engineering, another to the joy of creating something delicious. Another to the thrill that comes from diving off of anything taller than him!
As their mother, I have the privilege of discovering what stirs each of their hearts.
I can open doors.
I can introduce possibilities.
I can place good things before them.
But I know that I have to work hard to also allow them the freedom to look, question, explore and discover.
There is such beauty in that.
The quiet work of cultivating affections
I often think about the sort of men my boys might become.
Not simply what careers they will pursue or what accomplishments they might achieve, but who they will be when they step beyond the walls of our home.
Will they recognise goodness? Will they have the courage to stand for what is true and notice the needs of others?
Will they know how to enjoy simple pleasures without always needing more?
Will they be men who can look at the world with gratitude rather than entitlement?
Men who can work hard, love deeply, think carefully and worship wholeheartedly?
Of course, I cannot determine all of these things.
Motherhood is not a formula, and our children are not projects whose outcomes we can control.
But I can sow.
I can nurture.
I can cultivate.
I can try.
So my desire and effort points toward making our home a place where good things are welcomed, beautiful things are appreciated, meaningful conversations are encouraged and the wonders of God’s creation are regularly noticed.
And I can trust that, by His grace, some of these small seeds will take root.
Perhaps that is one of the quietest and most meaningful parts of motherhood.
We are not merely preparing our children for the responsibilities of adulthood.
We are also helping to shape what they will love, notice, treasure and pursue.
Come and see
I am learning that I do not need to create a childhood filled with extraordinary experiences for my boys to experience an extraordinary sense of wonder.
There is already so much goodness and beauty waiting to be discovered in the life we have been given.
I don’t want to be so busy preparing them for the future that I overlook the beauty of sharing the present with them. I want to become a mother who extends invitations.
Not constantly entertaining and endlessly organising activities.
Simply keeping my eyes and heart open to what is good.
A mother who says, “Come and see.”
A mother who delights in learning alongside her children.
A mother who remembers that there is more to education than acquiring knowledge, and more to childhood than preparing for adulthood.
There is also the wonderful business of being alive in God’s world.
Perhaps, years from now, when my boys are grown and have homes and families of their own, they will remember some of those little invitations.
The books we shared.
The things we made.
The walks we took.
The conversations around our table.
The moments when we stopped what we were doing because something was simply too cool to ignore.
And perhaps they will find themselves extending those same invitations to others.
“Come and see.”
Because there is so much goodness in this world worth noticing.
And what a privilege it is to be among the first to show our children.
With love,
Alethea
