Category: Wives & Mothers

C.H. Spurgeon on Mothers—Like Cat like Kit

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) was an English Baptist pastor known for his powerful preaching and extensive writing. Below is an excerpt titled “Like Cat Like Kit” from his publication, John Ploughman’s Pictures or Plain Talk for Plain People, which is filled with pithy and proverbial admonitions...

The Woman Who Wouldn’t Heil Hitler

The first time young Kurt Ziefle said “Heil Hitler” to his mother, he wished he hadn’t. Maria Ziefle calmly and firmly laid down the rule of the household. “We do not salute man in place of God,” she said. “In this house we will continue to...

The Child of So Many Tears

For years, Monica’s second son was a source of staggering grief to his mother. Her oldest son was exemplary and her daughter was devout. But her second son, Augustine, the most gifted of her children, was also the biggest disappointment. At 16, he stole fruit from...

The Reluctant Mother: Amy Carmichael

We can’t always identify life-changing moments as they occur. When a little Indian girl named Preena crawled into Amy Carmichael’s lap and called her “Amma” (or “mother” in Tamil) for the first time, neither of them could have known that this simple act would change both...

What They Did Before TV

My mother was the youngest of fourteen children growing up on a farm in the first part of the last century. The old home place burned down when she was a girl. It was a typical Southern house divided into a boys’ room, a girls’ room,...

When He Will Not Lead: Suggestions for Christian Wives in a Difficult Situation

A woman called our ministry looking for help, and I could hear the anguish in her voice. She’d tried everything she could think of to get her Christian husband to shoulder the responsibility of spiritual leadership in their family, but nothing worked. In fact, things were...

She Loved It!

She loved it! The deep blue four-inch vase sat in her glass cabinet for thirty years until her death. I’m convinced that she loved it more every year she lived. She didn’t have to say much about it. Just that fact that it sat there among...