Mere Motherhood Quotes

“I quote much scripture in this book. I do so intentionally, without references, because that is how I believe scripture should fit into the fabric of our lives. It is not tacked on; it is woven in.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey toward Sanctification

“We will always have Narnia.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey toward Sanctification

“I am a mother at heart. I build a home, which seems like a place to stay, but really, it is a place to leave. That is the way of it. Children are meant to grow up. I understand that now. Maybe you have yet to come face-to-face with what that means. I hope you will take courage and allow your children to walk away with grace.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“It seemed that I had worked passionately for nineteen years on a beautiful product and, in the end, he had become something entirely different than I intended. I did not recognize him at all. How could I go on creating beautiful pottery pieces if they weren't going to turn out as I had intended or hoped? Until one day I had an epiphany. I was not the potter. A potter was shaping my children, but it was not me. . .My son was not my product. He was the work of a great artist: the Creator of all”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“Mama, you are the first pillar of education. You are a vital part of the infrastructure of culture, family, and even the body of Christ.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey toward Sanctification

“The great secret older women keep is that adult children can cause more anxiety than toddlers; the good news is you get more sleep. The role of the older mother is prayer.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“Motherhood is a place of dreamy hopes and crushed fantasies and the hard, hard work of sinners in relationship with each other day by day.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“I didn’t start homeschooling out of fear, and I am happy about that now, because fear does damage wherever it appears.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“Homeschooling moms are what remains of the leisured classes in these hurried, frantic days.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey toward Sanctification

“We are living in an increasingly feminized society. Some people view that as an increasingly civilized society, but it has left our boys with deep desires for honor but few outlets for displaying it appropriately.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey toward Sanctification

“As the child becomes comfortable writing, you can increase the length of the written narration until eventually a high school student will be writing five to seven hundred words (or more) a day in a reading journal. Even in high school these journals should not be critiques of the book but simple retellings, although you can allow your students to give opinions here and there. You will also notice they often imitate the style of the writer they are reading as they write in these journals, which is beneficial.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“Oral narration can begin as soon as a child begins to tell stories on his own. This can be quite young for some children and not so young for others. Children are born persons, right?”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“You do not need to spend years and years teaching formal writing, but you should, without any exceptions, have your children narrate, both orally and in writing, every school day. Have them narrate every single day over ten years or so and your children will be comfortable thinkers and writers. It is a simple solution, but it will not work if enacted sporadically. Narrating has to be at the heart of the school day.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“To make matters worse, I was always saying we lived in a house where George Washington could have visited. One day, Chris asked me if George Washington was still alive. In disbelief, I answered, “No, Christopher, he died a long time ago.” He looked at me so sincerely and said, “All my friends are dead.” Then there is the problem large families face of imagining that once you read something everyone remembers it even if they weren’t born yet. Once, six year old Emily mused, “I wonder who the first man was?” I was appalled. “Emily, you know who the first man was: Adam!” She calmly replied, “Never heard of him.” I pulled out the Bible story book that day. A”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“Books by Margaret Hodges and Arnold Lobel, The D’Aulaires, and the Haders. Andy and the Lion retold the classic of Androcles and the Lion and was a favorite of almost everyone in my family.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“Sometimes random books would become favorites: Jack Jouette’s Ride, The Queen Who Did Not Like to Bake Gingerbread, Lentil, Anatole, The Church Mice, Little Tim and the Brave Sea Captain, Obadiah.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
C.S. Lewis”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“Eventually, I bought a Michael Clay Thompson Practice Voyage teacher’s book, and we started evaluating sentences according to four different criteria. Still, only one sentence a day. I wish we had done this from the beginning. It takes less than five minutes a day. Suddenly the English sentence began to make beautiful sense. Imagine how many sentences you can evaluate over the long haul?”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“A couple of years ago another friend, Amy Edwards, republished The Mother Tongue with an answer key. It is an excellent solution to a frustrating problem.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“That is how love works. You work hard at it and one day the work becomes joyful. Ordo Amoris. Education is the ordering of our affections.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“There is no way to warn the mommy next door or your daughter-in-law. It is a walk of joy that often includes the tearing off of the old dragon skin one painful layer at a time, made all the worse because you didn’t even know you were wearing dragon skin. No one ever does.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“Motherhood is a high calling. Civilization depends upon motherhood. I do not believe you should lose yourself so thoroughly in your motherhood that that is all you are. That is not healthy for you or your family. But I do think women need to know that motherhood is a high-value commodity in the market of civilization.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey toward Sanctification

“The question is not how much does the youth know when he has finished his education but how much does he care?” Charlotte Mason”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, & My Journey Toward Sanctification

“Morning Time...is a liturgy. It is a habit that ties the past to the future—a liturgy of love.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey toward Sanctification

“It is deeply satisfying to a boy's heart to hack at logs.”
― Cindy Rollins, Mere Motherhood: Morning Times, Nursery Rhymes, and My Journey toward Sanctification