Lisa has a painful childhood. Her alcoholic mother is angry, sarcastic, withdrawn, and sometimes physically abusive. As Lisa moves into the teen years, the embarrassment of having a drunken mother becomes excruciating. After marrying and giving birth to a daughter of her own, Lisa makes a promise to herself: “I will never, never be like my mother.”
And she isn’t. Lisa never drinks the first drop of liquor. She therefore never humiliates her child by showing up drunk at a parent-teacher conference or school basketball game. No, Lisa isn’t like her mom.
She isn’t a good mother either. Lisa is impatient and impossible to please. She controls her daughter, leaving the child no room for making her own choices. Although Lisa never slaps her daughter, she does scream at her on a daily basis.
What has gone wrong? Lisa has set her sights too low. On a scale of 1-100, her drunken mother is a two. Lisa, determined not to be like her mother, is a 20. That’s 10 times better than two – but nowhere near 100.
Lisa will become a truly good mother only when she sets her sights higher, that is, on the biblical motherhood standard. The book of Proverbs closes with a poem extolling the virtues of noble womanhood. A good mother is a woman of character who honors her husband, works hard, acts wisely, shows compassion to the needy, carries herself with dignity, speaks kindly, and respects God (Prov. 31:10-31.)