Ever since I was a little girl, I have always wanted to be a Mommy. The Lord has "given me the desires of my heart" and now five children call me "Mommy". Actually, our oldest son has graduated to "Mom" but in any case, I am definitely a Mommy now. We were married for eleven years and had three sons before our first (living) daughter was born. The fact that she even survived the pregnancy is a miracle. For one thing, I became pregnant with her when her brother, our youngest son, was only three months old. I have a history of miscarriage and, up until that point, I had never had two successful pregnancies in a row. This shows my complete lack of faith but from the moment I found out I was pregnant, I immediately began to prepare myself emotionally for the "fact" that I would miscarry her. 

Not only had I never had two successful pregnancies in a row, but early in my pregnancy, before I knew she was there, I had surgery on my hand and was given medication that can cause birth defects. Then, in my sixth month of pregnancy, I caught the chicken pox and was very ill. I ran a fever of 104 for three days. Nothing would bring the fever down. Then, in my eighth month of pregnancy, while we were two hours away from home at Family Camp, I began to bleed heavily and had to be rushed to the hospital. The bleeding soon stopped and to this day we do not know why I was bleeding so heavily.

In spite of all of that, we had a perfectly healthy little girl. When the doctor announced, "It's a girl!", I could not believe it! I said, "Are you sure?" The doctor laughed and said dryly, "Yes, they teach us how to tell the difference in medical school." 

The first few months I could not get over the fact that I had a DAUGHTER! I could not get enough of pink and lace and hair bands and bonnets, and patent leather shoes and tights and other "girly stuff". Then, one day, when she was a few months old, I had a moment of intense panic. It suddenly occurred to me that, while the boys had their Daddy to look up to as an example of how a godly man should act (and in my opinion, they couldn't have a better example to follow), my daughter would be looking to me as an example of how a godly woman acts. That was scary!

My moment of panic did not last long, but occasionally the thought of raising a daughter is almost overwhelming to me. The Lord has since blessed us with yet another daughter. Now I have two little girls who will be "following in my footsteps." What a responsibility! 

As with our sons, my husband and I have certain goals for our daughters. In a world that overwhelmingly believes that men and women should have identical roles, we want our daughters to "radiate femininity". We want them to be to be sweet, wholesome, modest, submissive to authority, have a servant's heart, pure, and to grow up to be godly women who truly desire to please the Lord in every way. If the Lord gives them a husband and children, we want them to follow their biblical roles of being a wife and mother with joy and contentment. We want them to be as submissive to their husband as Sarah was when she called Abraham "Lord". We want them to be as brave as Abigail when she went to face David and as courageous as Esther when she went to the king without being summoned. We want them to be as hardworking as Ruth. We want them to be as faithful to God as Elisabeth, in spite of her barrenness, which was a great shame in those days. We want them to desire to learn from Jesus as much as Mary did when she sat at His feet. We want them to minister to others as Dorcus did when she cared for the needy.

Wow! We have our work cut out for us!. Since our daughters are only five and two years old, most of our training in these areas is still ahead of us. I am certainly not writing as one who has raised our daughters to achieve these goals but I am writing as one who is sharing my deepest desires of my heart concerning my daughters. I am well aware of  the fact that to achieve these goals we must start now to train and teach them in these areas.

The other day I was making cinnamon rolls to take to a mother/daughter brunch. She pushed a chair over to the counter and said, "Can I help, Mommy?" It was one of those days that I was "spinning my wheels" and had many, many things still to do. I started to say, "Not this time, Honey." However, after two seconds of thinking about what my priorities should be, I said, "Sure!". She climbed up into the chair and I gave her a little piece of the dough. There she stood, barefoot and in her favorite "giraffe" play dress, with a smile on her lips and flour on her face and in her red curls. She was concentrating hard on her task. She made a sweet picture. Yes, it was well worth the extra time, to have her help me! Daughters are indeed a precious treasure.

If you feel it would be an encouragement or a blessing to someone, you have the Stilwell's permission to forward this article in its entirety. They just ask that you include this note at the bottom of the article with their name and e-mail address (Jeff and Kim Stilwell, jkstilwell@juno.com) in case someone wishes to contact them. Thank you.

Note regarding our links -- We've programmed our site to open external links in a new window so you won't lose your place here.  If you have a pop-up blocker installed on your browser, you may need to open links manually (right-click with your mouse over links).  We do not use any pop-up advertising on our site.  Contact us with questions!

This site is hosted by  Web design by Anne Elliott.

Copyright © 2000-2008 Anne Elliott.  Clipart ©2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement  Used by permission.