Mom, You've Got What It Takes

Margaret Taylor encourages young wives and mothers She didn't have a car until after her fifth child was born. Or a washing machine. And then, even with a most welcome front-loading Bendix, there were no domestic dryers?so she hung laundry on the porch, where it would freeze in the Illinois winters. Margaret Taylor, wife of Living Bible translator Ken Taylor, is the mother of 10, grandmother of 28, and great-grandmother of (so far) 22. Practical, resourceful, and Spirit-led, Margaret is a most appropriate "older woman" to answer the Titus 2 question: "What can you tell younger women that will encourage them to be godly wives, mothers, and Christians?" Be an encourager. Asked how to support a husband in his work, she candidly replies, "I think I fell short in that area. Well, I didn't let the children bug him when he was working. But as for personal affirmation, I was short in terms of words like 'I know what you're doing is going to help a lot of people.'" She offers this reminder: "Everyone needs encouragement?even men who seem as if they're self-sufficient and go-getters. They need a literal pat on the shoulder. And words." Get a rocking chair. At one point, the Taylors had five preschoolers?three in diapers. Now able to laugh about it, Margaret recalls the spring when all five had measles: "That taxed my nursing abilities! There was no rocking chair to rock even one sick child. If I were to live life over again and couldn't purchase a rocking chair, I would beg or borrow one. Babies and rocking just naturally go together with lullabies, even half-forgotten ones. I always had to create my own rocking motion by sitting on the edge of a chair. It just isn't the same." Eat together. Many families today have difficulty scheduling even one meal together each week. Margaret finds the trend disturbing. "We had dinner together seven nights a week," she says, "and breakfast and lunch! Meals were meals?there was a beginning to the meal, and an end to the meal. You sat down; you asked the blessing." What she sees happening nowadays is that a mom with preschoolers fixes their lunch, "but she doesn't actually sit down and eat with them. She's kind of hovering around and grabs her sandwich standing up." She views mealtime as a bonding experience and suspects it might account for frequent Taylor reunions?the whole family traditionally comes home in December. Last year, 54 people sat down for Christmas dinner at her house. And it was the third such gathering in nine months, with family members attending from Oregon, California, Idaho, Georgia, Delaware, and Washington DC as well as nearby Indiana and Illinois. Stay connected to God. It's not easy for any mother to find time for herself, but with ten children, the struggle intensifies. Margaret exclaims with a laugh, "I got so tired of hearing about Susannah Wesley!" But on days when a personal quiet time was out of the question, she still managed to stay spiritually connected: "We had our family devotions faithfully?every evening. Bible reading and prayer and singing." She recommends not making the time excessively long, especially as the children get older, but to keep it interesting, enjoyable, and consistent. Make chores appropriate, not inordinate. Between yard work, baby needs, and kitchen duties, there were ample chores for all the Taylor children. The oldest girl at home took the most responsibility for indoor tasks, and each one in turn proved quite capable. Margaret tells of a two-week trip she and Ken took the day after their first daughter graduated from high school. They left all the children (ages 3 to 14) in her care. In today's world, entrusting such responsibility to a 17-year-old might seem very brave. Margaret retorts, "Or foolhardy! But the point is that [the children] did not feel put upon or abandoned. In other words, they could carry on while we were gone. Just recently I came across letters the children wrote to us when we were away (we never telephoned home?that was an extravagance): 'Don't worry. We're getting along fine. Mary Lee and Allison have chicken pox.' They were taking it in stride." But Margaret learned an important lesson by observing an acquaintance from what she terms "a large family" (15 people). That young woman determined not to have children of her own because she'd "had enough of babies." Margaret explains, "Her mother had maybe inadvertently given [her a little too much.] So I leaned over backwards the other direction, asking my own children to help make the salad or this kind of thing, [rather than always minding the little ones]. Babies are fussiest an hour before dinner?that's a given. So my rationale was that it was my baby, not the child's baby." Teach financial responsibility. Margaret once wrote that learning to handle money "packs more of a wallop when the money has been earned rather than simply received in allowance." The teenage Taylor children had typical jobs like paper routes and lawn care, but they were best known for their egg business. Using a "beat-up coaster wagon," they'd deliver fresh eggs Margaret purchased from a local farm. The benefits were many: they became proficient at making change; they learned the ins and outs (and challenges) of running a "company"; and best of all, the ten-cent-per-dozen profit added up and paid for many a stay at summer camps. "So much of our attitude toward money," Margaret reasons, "comes from the way that we were brought up and saw our parents handling money. But today we're [so] influenced by the media and advertising that everybody wants to start out married life with all the things their parents have accumulated over 25 or 30 years. It's unreasonable." Though she acknowledges the advice is unpopular, especially with the ease of charging, she recommends, "Go without until you can [pay cash]." Who needs TV? Margaret offers another suggestion she imagines few will follow: "We have never had TV, and we'd recommend [doing without]. But we realize it's going to fall on deaf ears," she laughs. Her family obviously didn't feel deprived?a number of her children and now grandchildren have opted not to have a television in their homes. Asked why she considers TV unnecessary, she answers, "The really good programs are so few and far between?and the advertising is so blatant?that it seems to outweigh the good. I don't feel that we're denying ourselves at all." In its place, she recommends her family's favorite pastime: reading. Though she couldn't spend as much time reading to the children as her own mother did, she tried her best and comments, "Our children remember it with pleasure." Plan! Having recently given up driving, Margaret must plan ahead for errands. On Tuesdays, a friend drives her to a resale shop, where the two women volunteer. She finishes a half-hour sooner than the driver and spends those 30 minutes at the market next to the shop. Such resourcefulness is not a new skill, however. Years ago, with five children and no car, Margaret needed to plan wisely for her Saturday shopping excursion: "I had to be careful not to buy more than I could carry a mile in two shopping bags, so I couldn't purchase sugar, flour, and shortening the same week. And you would never say, 'Oh, I'm out of such and such' and run to the store." She also learned to use foods requiring less frequent restocking: "I rely more on canned goods than on frozen. And we don't eat a lot of meats." Memorize Scripture. After discussing some practical basics of family life, Margaret gets to the topic she has been waiting to address: helping children internalize God's Word. In fact, the Living Bible grew from her husband's idea to reword scriptural passages so the children could understand them easily. "But we did not emphasize memorizing Scripture," she says as a preface to describing one of her favorite gifts: Bible recitation. "This was almost unbelievable. Our grandson and his wife have five children?9, 8, 6, 4, and 1. This past year they memorized Isaiah 53, and they recited it for us at Christmastime." She points out that the two youngest were not expected to memorize, but the four-year-old learned the passage just from hearing the family repeat it so much! Margaret realizes the children "are not necessarily understanding it" at this point, but says that doesn't matter, as long as the verses get inside them. She knows that "later they will [understand] and they will be grateful." Asked to sum up for young mothers the benefit of Scripture memorization, Margaret doesn't hesitate for a second, but answers with one of her own many memorized verses, Psalm 119:11 (KJV): "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee." by Sandy Feit