Part 9: Stories (Beautiful reminders from Mitten Strings from God)
I have been wanting to re-share some posts from the days when I was a young mother - gems I had extracted from one of my wow-books*.
I am re-posting the series of 11 parts here, specially for the young mothers around me. May your journey of motherhood be as beautiful and as enjoyable as the Lord intended it to be for us!
[*Wow-books are those that have shaped my life in some ways, and they occupy a special place in my heart and on my bookshelf, treasured.]
My children wanted stories.
Not just gory anecdotes, but real stories they could taste, and feel and see.
Stories that could challenge their imaginations, scare them silly, make them laugh.
And yet, reassure them of the rightness and order of all creation.
"Each of us has a storyteller inside, but we may need to find her, and gently wake her up."
Locating that storyteller has proved to be a process of learning to see the world through fresh eyes, and learning to put my faith in that unknown part of myself where stories reside.
Our first task as storytellers is to become good listeners and good watchers.
And so, I began to look upon the world itself as the raw material for stories.
Suddenly, the moon, the stars and even the raindrops sliding down the windowpanes, all become imbued with life.
Something deep within me was aroused.
Storytelling, I realised, was not only a way to reach out to my two sons but also a pathway back to my own intuitive wisdom.
Years ago, parents told stories to children both to entertain them and to teach them about the world's complexities.
But we lost the art of story telling when we lost that sort of open-ended time with our children
reflecting, wondering, watching time that gives rise to stories.
Where do our children hear most of their stories today?
More often than not, they receive their stories from the media.
The stories we mothers can tell are different.
They are food for the soul, and they nourish us, the storytellers, as well as the listeners.
Telling a story is really a way of breathing deeply with our children.
Observing the minute particulars of a season, a day, a moment, we discover the stuff that stories are made of: a leaf twirling away on a breeze, a seagull who flies higher than the rest, a work who has a job to do, a dog on a journey, a stone with a perculiar past, a boy who never wants to sleep....
Telling stories is still a challenge for me.
This is one aspect of mothering that requires all my creative faculties and to be fully present wtih my children.
But I also know that whenever I feel that my story well has run dry, it is only because I have not been paying enough attention to my life.
And so, for my own sake, as well as for my sons.
I stop then, and breath deeply, and look more closely.
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