Beyond Mere Motherhood Quotes

“Once upon a time, I was learning about books, and now I have read so many of them. Once they were new worlds to be conquered, now they are old friends to be remembered.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“We should be discerning readers. Story is a powerful force, and in that way we need to enter a story alert and ready to interact with the ideas that come our way, because ideas have consequences. It is good to let stories take us sometimes to places we do not want to go for the very reason that we do not want to go there. Stories can make us aware of the dangers waiting for us in the real world. A well-crafted novel is often superior to any other kind of reading, because change occurs first in our imaginations.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“Pleasure reading is an individual sport, but talking about books is a team event. It connects us to others.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“Sticking with a church might be the soundest way to grow into organic community. Sticking with it for a long, long time. Do you want your children to be gracious to you someday when they see all your mistakes? Be gracious today with your church. Your children will learn more about real community when you stay rather than leave.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“The truth is that all humans are always seeing something, paying attention to something, learning something. Perhaps, we are learning every sort of sexual innuendo known to man by watching endless reruns of Friends. Perhaps, we are learning how to fit in socially and politically by spending hours and hours on social media. Perhaps we are paying attention, day and night, to what we don't have, wasting our time on Earth in envy, frustration, and discontent. We are paying attention to something. Maybe it isn't verb tenses, or the periodic table of elements, or the Great Books, but we are all being educated by our loves. Recognizing that maybe what we love is unworthy is the first step in being truly educated. What is worthy of this love I have? What is worthy of my time and attention? Let me tell you a secret. Education is free. It is simply a matter of opening your eyes and acknowledging the 'I don't know.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“While having a rigid schedule is dangerous, not paying attention to the rhythms of life is equally so. A rigid schedule is saying that you want all or nothing. A rhythm is accepting the flow of life with grace, while putting into practice those habits which promote mental, physical, and spiritual health.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“We are creatures designed for sabbath rest. Sabbath is not a rule, but a gift. We can use sabbath in the traditional way by setting aside one day a week for God, and we can also think of it more broadly as it applies to all of our routines, plans, and even addictions.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“You have to have faith in God to recognize the lie and to believe you are storing up treasure in Heaven. That begins in the most mundane tasks you do each day. Monasticism reminds us of this. But it is not all drudgery, as some would have you believe. You can pray for that new car or that new porch furniture or that vacation. I do. God hears all those prayers you send up to Him. After you pray, monasticism reminds us again of what comes next—waiting. Praying and waiting are marks of trust. Praying and waiting with a smile, and not frustration, is the hallmark of joy. When we understand in our heart of hearts that we can trust God completely, then we will find joy.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“Who else in our culture is ordering their days in both the mundane and the sacred? Not only are moms at home fulfilling the ancient ideal of scholé, they are also fulfilling the sacred life of order and worship found in monasteries all across medieval Europe. That dirty diaper is an icon to the lowly way you have chosen, the giving and caring for life created by God Himself. No wonder you are scorned and derided by our culture. You are a seriously dangerous threat to the status quo. The iconoclasts don’t want your dirty diapers, or your sweet babies, or your ordered days. They will exchange all of that for thirty pieces of silver, which you can then use to buy some of that stuff you saw on Pinterest or Instagram”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“Edith Schaeffer says that if you want all or nothing you get nothing, and I have made that the motto of my life.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“The key to hope is knowing God and believing him. The key to that is having His Word hidden in your heart.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“Suggested Reading The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer The Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges The Roots of American Order by Russell Kirk Norms and Nobility by David Hicks Never Give In: The Extraordinary Character of Winston Churchill  by Stephen Mansfield My Early Life: 1874-1904  by Winston S. Churchill Liturgy of the Ordinary by Tish Warren 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke Growth Ideas Listen to Churchill’s “Never Give In” speech on YouTube. Watch the movie The Darkest Hour (2017). Set up a Morning Time for your family or yourself. (My book Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love can get you started.)”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“Clearly, Wendi was given the gift of intelligence, but it’s what she did with it that is so fascinating. She didn’t pile up degrees or become a university professor; she stayed home, had children, and read, amassing a lot of children and a lot more books along the way. That is where God found her, and that is where He used her.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“Hicks writes that paideia, or education, was “the property of every citizen, a natural right, which he was obligated to practice, to protect, and to pass on.”[7] Or one could say that all education is self-education. The self-governed are the self-educated. The freeborn American learner, parent or child, must be educated with elite classical values in order to live out his full potential before God and man and society.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“We are responsible for the past, for remembering. As parents interested in raising our children as free persons, we forget the past to our detriment. In fact, without knowing the past we can never be free. To be disconnected and unmoored from the past is to be insane, alone, and untethered in the universe.  When we forget the past, everything we sense is skewed.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“Skills done well have that added benefit of becoming arts. I like to think that is how God rescues even the lowborn, like me.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“learning takes place in times of leisure.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“My goal was always 180 Morning Times a year, but I would guess that hitting 90 was what mostly happened. A good year meant that I got in two-thirds of those 180 days, a bad year, half. That’s the reality. But look at the numbers. Morning Time is a densely rich time. Ninety days of Morning Time a year was 90 days well spent. In my large family it could have been much worse and sometimes was. Sometimes we had bad days, and sometimes we even had bad years. According to my calculations, one good homeschooling year makes up for two bad ones.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“I am spending my hours buying foolishness, but worse than what I am doing is what I am not doing.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“The pursuit of knowledge (the creation) is ultimately the pursuit of the knowledge of God (the Creator).”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“I noticed, at first accidentally and later by paying attention, that even people with elite college degrees are missing much of what previous generations believed made up the educated human. I recently was talking to a seminarian with a doctorate who had never heard of Hamlet. This is not an isolated incidence. We have become so focused on that sheepskin that we failed to notice that it was not what we thought it was. In our culture, people cling to their degrees to justify their very existence, yet all the while they have been cheated out of knowledge. Most of them never even know what they have lost. Clinging to their “diploma” has left them as dull and ignorant as the pilgrim named Ignorance in Pilgrim’s Progress who wanted to get into the Kingdom without his certificate. These people think their certificate is a free pass.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“One thing I know now is that all education is ultimately self-education”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too

“We all wake up one day, no matter what school we attended, and realize that there is a lot out there that we do not know. If we don’t have that awakening, then we are ignorant indeed.”
― Cindy Rollins, Beyond Mere Motherhood: Moms Are People Too