At MOPS we often say that while moms can't necessarily make a better world for their children, we can make better children for our world. It's good to know where to focus our limited attention, especially in these days of great distraction around us.

In Matthew 24:6, Jesus spoke of the end of the age, saying, "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come." Supposedly, the purpose of war is to make a better world. That's the reason given by those who instigate and those who respond. Just who will benefit from this "better world" depends on your side in the matter.

Our country is at war. It is not a war that has been entered into lightly. It is a war prayerfully considered and carefully undertaken by our nation's leaders, who strongly believe that war will make a better world - for our country and for our globe. Whatever side we individually take in support or against the philosophy of this war, we are in it.

As a mom, how can we respond?

For my own answer, I look to other wars currently engaged about me. The war against cancer concerns me as I watch a co-worker fight it off for the second time in five years. The war that stands up against cruelty and injustice is one undertaken by a dear friend who secures jobs for welfare to work participants. One mom I know fights against the misjudgment of her son's learning disability in a less-than-up-to-date school system. Another mom prays her child through an eye surgery that should be simple but suddenly seems complicated. A couple in my neighborhood raises up the standard for their almost thirty-year-old marriage where others might have given up long ago. I bend my knees and bow my head and war against the evil around my own family. I speak against the temptations hissing in the ears of my teenagers, turning our attention to fear rather than faith in a time of uncertainty, and robbing us of joy where we actually have many reasons to be thankful.

War is all about us. I'm realizing that a mother's response to this war against Iraq is much like my response to the small skirmishes and larger battles of my every day.

Certain "mother-guidance" serves me in such moments:

• Will I meet each day with fear or with faith? War is an opportunity to realize that we are not in charge of life - not our own and not even the lives of those we love. It humbles us to the power of Someone else whose care reaches beyond our home and country to the ends of the galaxies.

• How am I growing in these uncertain times? While I can't control the world around me, I can control the world within me. What am I feeding my own soul and the souls of those around me? Do I still know how to laugh, to invest, and to love? Am I moving more toward what I want to become or away from that? Am I offering myself permission to be afraid - that's normal - and then to move that fear toward faith?

• How am I focusing my mothering? When my children look to me, what do they see? More than anything, I want to model a real life. I won't be perfect day in and day out. Monster Mom may rear her head in my tired moments and Worry-Some Mom will certainly find more than a few items worthy of her attention. But the sum of my efforts as a mom toward my children I pray are focused on teaching them character and sustenance and hope in a power greater than them or than me so that when they fail and their world fails - sure facts to occur - they hold on tightly to the unfailing hope of Jesus Christ.

  Your "mother-guidance" will be personal, as is mine. If you are one of the many mothers who is mothering alone due to your husband's deployment, I thank you, on behalf of all mothers, for your sacrifice. May God sustain you as your husband serves our country. If you are a military mom yourself, my heart goes out to you as well. I pray for God's provision for your family as you provide for our country.

I pray that this war does indeed create a better world for us and for our children - and for all the people of Iraq and our world. That is my prayer. My job during this time is the same as it has been for the last nineteen years of motherhood: to create better children for my world. God help me. God help us as mothers.

Elisa Morgan is the President of Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) International, Inc.  This article was distributed in a March '03 Mom-E-Mail (pronounced Mommy Mail) and is also published on the MOPS International Web site at www.MOPS.org.