As Mother’s Day approaches, I am taken back to when I was a little girl. I loved and looked forward to going to church on Mother’s Day. Entering the church, the greeters would give a flower to each lady. My mom would allow me to hold her flower during the sermon…and I longed for the day when I would have my own flower to hold.

I do not remember the exact age I received my first flower on Mother’s Day, but I remember it being the first time I truly felt honored to be a woman. I was not yet a mother, but it made me think of the type of mother and woman I wanted to be and to become––a nurturing, encouraging, and strong woman just like my mother and grandmothers were.

I feel blessed to have my mother and also my mother in law…and to have had my grandmothers and great grandmothers as well. These beautiful role models are a bit intimidating though.  It is a lot to live up to because when I think of them, I cannot help but to see a lot of the Proverbs 31 woman in them all.

I read a devotion by Julia Bettencourt I absolutely fell in love with called Strands of Pearls.  She says, a Proverbs 31 lady is like a strand of pearls. Each characteristic is a separate pearl on the strand of life. No one immediately has the all of the strand. You have to work at it.

Here is a list from her devotion of the ‘pearls’ or characteristics of the Proverbs 31 lady:

Virtue

Faithfulness

Reverence

Goodness

Willing worker

Good manager

Industrious

Strength

Endurance

Well rounded

Charitable

Provider

Well dressed

Wife of a good husband

Good businesswoman

Honorable

Wise

Kind

Good mother

Busy

Praiseworthy

Attains or excels

Fear of the Lord

And fruit bearing

It is a long list, isn’t it?

In my life, some of the pearls come natural to me, some I will always strive to obtain, and some I will struggle to keep on my strand. But I now realize even my mother figures have to and had to work on their pearls. It is less intimidating than before when I think of it this way.

So what are some of the things we do and can do to take the thread in our hands and strand our pearls as we go through life? Of course, read the bible and pray. We can look for wisdom from our Christian female role models (our mother figures), and we can gather strength and understanding from our friendships with other Christian women. All of these will make us the strong Christian women we all hope to be and to remain.