Celebrating mothers – and my mum in particular :)

mum and ClaireAs we approach Mother’s Day, it felt appropriate for me to focus on motherhood – and the huge impact our mothers have on us. When I wrote about International Women’s Day, which we also celebrated this month, I spoke about what a privilege it is to be a mother to my own daughter, but what a challenge it is to bring her up in today’s society too.

I’m so grateful for the wisdom of the other women I have around me – who not only help me when I’m in those ‘tearing my hair out’ moments with my kids, but who also challenge me and push me not to settle for the mundane status quo. They continually urge me to seek hard after God and His purposes for my life and not to allow my insecurities to stop me from being all God wants me to be.

Those women include some great, close friends within my church, who I simply couldn’t cope without (hence I view them as God’s gift to me) as well as those I’m privileged enough to work with within my Christian publishing career. As women I think we often do a brilliant job of supporting one another. I mentioned in a previous post too that my sister also often ‘tells it like it is’ to me – while we may not see each other that often we speak words of truth into each other’s lives, and we know we are always there for each other.

Today, however, my focus has got to be on the one woman who has not only influenced me the most but also inspired me the most too: my mum. What a testimony she is to a life of faithfulness in the midst of suffering.

To read the rest of this, please click here.

International Women’s Day 2014

Happy International Women’s Day! We have so much to be thankful for – but there’s also much to reflect upon. I have had the huge privilege of writing some of my own reflections about IWD2014 for Christian Today. You can read them here.

Charlie_Davies_with_leatherworkers

I was also able to spend some time this week gathering quotes from some amazing, inspirational women who told me what IWD2014 means to them – either a day to celebrate or a day to think about a particular issue. One such woman is Dr Ruth Valerio, Churches and Theology Director, A Rocha UK, who told me that:

I’d like IWD to be a day when we celebrate the role of women in producing our food. Did you know that 60–80% of food in most developing countries is grown and/or processed by women and that women are the main producers of the world’s staple crops (rice, wheat and maize)? And yet, shockingly, they only own 2% of the world’s land. Let’s give thanks today for the women around the world who grow our food and use that to remind us to be mindful of each mouthful that we eat.

And here is what Julia Immonen, founder of Sport For Freedom, said:

International Women’s Day is a really exciting opportunity to celebrate what it is to be a woman – gentle, yet strong and determined, and to be thankful for those who have gone before to make so much possible and achievable for us as women today. It is also a day where we can stop to recognise the fact that many women within the UK and throughout the world are still subject to terrible injustices. Our work at Sport For Freedom focusses specifically on the injustice of human trafficking in the UK that we long to cease to exist by seeing an end to modern-day slavery in our generation. I believe that we all have a role to play in this mission; we can’t all do everything, but we can all do something. Let’s celebrate this International Women’s Day and also be challenged to use our freedom to fight for those who do not have theirs.

To read what the others shared with me please click here.