Dear Mommies,

 My oldest daughter and I have just recently finished reading through "The Hiding Place". She was spell-bound. Not only was this her first introduction to the raw evil humans can inflict on others (outside of the Bible) but she was especially intrigued by the very real presence of God and the miraculous answering of prayer revealed again and again. I hesitated to share the book with her because, as her mother, I wish I could shield her forever from the darkness. But, as that is impossible in this fallen world I felt that this was the best way to introduce that fact and I strongly felt the Lord's leading that this was the time. Yes, it was horrible, but God was there.

All of that to say, it has been a very long time since I have read the book myself and I had never read it as an expectant mother with three young children under my wings. I would like to share a couple of excerpts with you:

   "The woman next to me on the relay bench was an intense Communist woman named Floor. She and her husband had managed to get their two small children to friends before their arrest, but she worried aloud about them and about Mr. Floor, who had tuberculosis. He worked on the rope-making crew at the compound next to Phillips and each noon they managed to exchange a few words through the barbed wire separating the two enclosures. Although she was expecting in September she would never eat her morning allotment of bread but passed it through the fence to him. She was dangerously thin, I felt, for an expectant mother, and several times I brought her a portion of my own breakfast bread. But this too was always set aside for Mr. Floor....

   ...The sound of the firing squad [in the men's camp] was heard more and more often. One lunchtime when the bell sounded to return to work, Mrs. Floor did not appear at the bench beside me. It always took a while for my eyes to readjust to the dim factory after the bright light outside: it was only gradually that I saw a hunk of black bread still resting at her place on the bench. There had been no husband to deliver it to...

   On the morning of September 1 Mrs. Floor gave birth to a baby girl. The child lived four hours."

   I know it can get kind of monotonous living the same routine every day, sometimes we forget that we are doing the Lord's work. And it is the Lord's work, after all He said, "Whatever you do for the least of these..." (Matthew 25:40) and, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Jesus Christ." (Colossians 3:23&24). What a privilege that this is the work that the Lord has given us to do, and never will I view it in the same common way again. For the last week I have been caught unaware many times with thoughts such as, "Mrs. Floor, and countless other mothers, did not have the ability to feed their little ones a filling breakfast every morning." or, "What a blessing it is to be rocking my baby right now...what if I had been born in another time or place?". During various times of the day I will feel this little one kicking in his secret place and I will be overcome with gratitude that I can provide him with the nutrients that his little body needs to be born healthy. It is almost overwhelming to think of what those mothers must have been going through. How desperate Mrs. Floor must have been to keep her husband alive! How often she must have laid on her overcrowded cot at night and dreamed of another time when her family would be together again and her husband could romp on the floor with their little ones and she could drift to sleep in his arms every night, just as it was before the war. What must that morning have been like after giving birth to her precious little daughter? Did she hope or despair of the future? Oh mommies, let us never take our families for granted but let us remember that for every time we must wipe a runny nose, there is a mommy somewhere grieving for a little nose she will never wipe again. For every meal we must prepare there is a mommy wondering when her children will have their next meal and where it will come from. When you are rocking your baby, and baby just does not want to sleep, think of Mrs. Floor and the baby she was never allowed to rock in a sweet clean nursery or a cozy living room rocker, I'm sure she would trade places with us in a minute! May we never take these "common" tasks for granted but let us live up the experience to its fullest! Let us rest under the covering of our blessed husbands, breathe in the fresh baby scent of our new borns, delight in the soft sleepiness of our toddlers dozing on our laps at night, drink up the twinkle in our preschoolers eyes- and praise the Lord that our eight year old has to learn about "the raw evil humans can inflict on others" out of a book, we could have been there...