“Just as a woman’s body is designed for mothering and nourishing, so a woman’s soul and mind will be drawn to work demanding spiritual maternity, even if she never bears a child.”

Anne Roche Muggeridge
Via Women of Grace Daily Grace Lines

I know many women who don’t have children, and some who are single, who still perform the role of mothers (though they may not always think of it as such). I had never thought of this concept of spiritual motherhood and women being designed for it until I read Johnette Benkovic’s Full of Grace. John Paul II discusses it in some of his work too, but Johnette’s descriptions resonated with me in a way JP2’s didn’t. (His work has struck me in different ways.) Now that I’m a mother – and I was never AIMING to be a mother, let me assure you! – I can better see this in the women around me. I can also see how I was motherlike, though I was in denial.

Being a mother – being DESIGNED for motherhood in its various facets – is not a BAD thing. I know that now. I think, though, that I would have enjoyed my pre-mother days more if I had understood it more fully.