No language can express the power, and beauty, and heroism, and majesty of a mother's love. It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over wastes of worldly fortunes sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity like a star.
~Edwin Hubbell Chapin
I once read an interview of a male celebrity. The name of the person escapes me now and is irrelevant really, but what he said struck me and has stayed with me. I thought it was an interesting observation; one that I found surprising; one that made me wonder if I was alone in my thinking.
The more I have thought about it, the more I think it's simply a difference between being a father and being a mother.
The male celebrity, a husband and father, was discussing his deep love for his children and his wife, but in the end he remarked that it was his wife that he loved best of all; not his children.
Now this is a reasonable statement to make, but it stung me a little. And it made me consider where my allegiance lies within our little family.
And what I came up with was that NOTHING absolutely NOTHING could come between me loving, protecting and being there for my kids. This is not to say that I love my husband less than I love my kids, but I could think of scenarios that could make me reconsider my love for my spouse. I could not think of any reasons that I could stop loving my children.
A mother's love is so deep and wide that it is all encompassing. There is no end and no beginning. It is simply there like the air that we breathe; it is not seen, but can often be felt and is essential for life. A mother's love is not something that can be given and taken away and given again, perhaps to someone else. A mother's love is a constant; a boulder so large that it cannot be moved.
A father can love his children, take care of his children, provide for his children, protect his children and teach his children, but a father did not grow that child in his own body; a father did not feel the first tiny stirrings of that tiny being; a father does not know the internal, animal-like, quick as lightning instinct that is born in a woman at the instant she becomes a mother.
This may seem like a sweeping assumption; and that's because it is. I certainly do know some mothers whose instincts were still-born; mothers who have felt none of these deep feelings for her children. And I have known some fathers who have learned this instinct and act as both father and mother to his children; fathers whose love is greater than all others, as a mother's love is.
A child who feels this kind of love, like a warm, fluffy comforter wrapped around him or her throughout his or her life is bound to grow and thrive and love too. Over and out...
Anna
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