I have never ceased to be amazed at how stubborn the love of a mother for her children is. Even when her son seems to be hopelessly entangled in all kinds of trouble of his own making, his mother goes on loving him intensely and unceasingly. And, in my work with troubled youngsters, I have time and time again, witnessed the rejected mother refuse to give up, tenaciously trying to help in spite of her son’s insults and attempts to alienate her.

     It is unbelievable how much pain a mother is capable of bearing when the hurt comes from someone she truly loves. This is so true that some people scoff and shake their heads in disbelief at the patience a mother is capable of exhibiting. Some even accuse such a woman of being blind fool and allowing herself to be stepped on. They urge her to put her foot down, to call a halt to all the abuse that she is suffering. Few succeed in their efforts to “Talk some sense into her.”

     It is difficult to get through to such a woman because love does not understand the reasons the intellect formulates so nicely. There is more to a mother’s love than pure logic. There is that mysterious element in her kind of loving that blindly urges her on to protect, to shelter and to nurture, in spite of the hurt, the pain and the direct or indirect attempts to shut her off.

     I have never understood what that mysterious element in a mother’s love is all about. I doubt if I ever will. And I am not even sure that mothers themselves understand it. It seems to me though that there is something about the nature of a mother’s commitment to her children that causes her bond with them to be made of grade A steel.

     Commitment implies involvement. And where there is very little involvement, one cannot expect strong commitment. However, when a child is conceived in love and is borne in his mother’s womb, nourished by her for nine months and brought into the world in tremendous pain, already there is present more than enough involvement to call for a heavy commitment. Add to that years of nurturing, sheltering and plain old-fashioned loving and you have a sure formula for an iron-clad commitment.

     A mother’s love is so difficult to destroy because there is too much commitment, too much involvement that has gone into it. The mother does not discourage or surrender easily because she has put too much of herself into her relationship with her children. All the negative behavior the hurt and the attempts by her wayward children to push her away are not enough to turn her off. The roots of her love for them have gone too deep and are not easily uprooted.

     The word is commitment … strong commitment. So long as it is there, mothers will be mothers. Tenacious and unconditional in their loving, they will oftentimes be overprotective and just as often strangely unobjective when it concerns their children. So we can rarely change mothers in this aspect; all we do is understand their feelings and learn to live with them.