Moms, did you know you have superpowers? Maybe you don’t feel like it today. We understand. Here’s some good news. Moms do have superpowers. One of them is the power of your powers is influence.

Influence is “the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others,” according to www.dictionary.com

Today, a congregation of women scream, “WE WANT POWER,” a cry of a hurting world.  Movies portray the powerful in the role of savior or destroyer. Super heroes rescue. Hobbits triumph over evil, hurling it back into the depth of the pit whence it came. Evil overlords pronounce supreme rulership over the world and wield destruction as their weapon.

And yet…it is the woman— the wife and mother— who wields the power of influence. She is that quiet warrior behind closed doors who scrubs bacteria from toilets, tucks wiggly bodies into beds, makes peanut butter sandwiches and judges Lego building contests.  She covers the words of the Lord with sticky-tabs and prays in the gray dawn for her husband, her children, and those sick in the church body, noticing those hurting souls. She makes the house feel like a home whether it is a trailer, an orphanage sick room, a suburban house, or a mansion in a gated community. She plants flowers, reminding the family that beauty exists when the money’s too tight to travel to a museum. She has water fights with teens in the backyard when the move to a new city just isn’t working out. She laughs at a child’s first attempt at a joke.

The mother holds the “flagon with the dragon, the chalice with the palace, the cup of poison” (The Court Jester, with Danny Kaye). She can share the poisoned cup and live in a negative environment, full of negativity and strife. She also holds the honey-flavored drink of kindness that she can dispense regularly for a sweet environment. It is up to her which one she drinks and shares from and which she throws out.

Our culture tends to look at the work of a mother with disdain and pity. She is viewed as powerless. The common belief is that mother must leave the home for a full time career to influence the world. But C. S. Lewis, in one of his collected letters, wrote, “The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only—and that is to support that career.”

Oh, she is powerful enough to turn the earth on its axis! Night can quickly become day, or vice versa, under her influence. The power I lacked in the orphanage was authority over medical issues and freedom of transportation. I was not powerless. In spending time with them, interacting, playing, I was answering the question, “Is life good?” My children needed a “Yes!”  answer. They needed to know there was more to life— a different life— than the neglect and mere survival they had experienced. (excerpt from A Positive Adoption Story: The Door from Theology to Reality)

Listen to this week’s The Whole House Podcast for more about the Superpowers of Motherhood! Subscribe on iTunes here.

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